NCSJP Fellows

Concept

The NCSJP Fellows Program consists of teams of college students (Fellows) throughout the state of North Carolina.  These Fellows identify and explore social problems in their local communities, ranging from individual pockets of need to institutional discrimination, craft a plan to remedy these issues, and implement advocacy and organizing techniques to address those problems.  Fellows “learn while they serve”, and develop the basic tools and principles that they can use to solve similar issues the rest of their lives.

Issue

There are serious social problems throughout North Carolina that you have never heard about, seen or even imagine.  Why are you unaware of them? Because they are local problems, taking place hundreds of mile away from your corner of the State, known only by those living and working in the community.  They rarely make the newspaper or 5 o’clock news, and even when they do, sufficient resources and capacity do not exist to address these issues.  We want to help, but we need to first know what the problems are and where they exist.

Solution

The NCSJP Fellows Program consists of teams of college students throughout the state of North Carolina.  These Fellows are students who are interested in the greater ideas of social and economic justice, but do not necessarily have the experience or skills that come with organizing or working with grass-roots groups.  We take these students and give them tools they need to make a difference where they see they must.

Fellows are tasked with the job of identifying and exploring social problems in their local communities.  The range of issues can be as broad as NCSJP’s mission mandate – which is to say anything that touches on the widespread social inequality among traditionally under-represented groups in North Carolina.  Once the issues are identified, the Fellows devise a plan of action for their issue.  The plans may be a varied as the issues, with some plans attempting to completely solve the problem, while large issues may be best served by merely being brought to local attention.

We facilitate this process by providing training on basic organizing, media, legal, and technical aspects, while assisting the students in crafting a plan of action to remedy their local problem.  The central office of NCSJP functions as home base, providing our Fellows the technical infrastructure they require (i.e. web site access, email address, telephone numbers, etc.) as well as the knowledge of our professional staff and central clearinghouse of local and state-wide issues.  We would be perfectly positioned to notice subtle trends of discrimination or illegality which regional organization would be completely unaware, and would have the proximity and presence to bring these issues to light.

In addition to the work during the semesters, there would also be a yearly conference in Raleigh in the early summer months, which all the Fellows would attend.  The conference would consist of presentations by each of the groups about the project they worked on, what strategies were used, how successfully they were, and what they learned that can be used by the rest of the group.  There would also be an opportunity to watch the legislature in session and see what goes into the lawmaking process.  The aim is to have a solid group of students who are able to go out into their communities and implement these strategies for the rest of their lives, whether as a part of an established community group or simply as concerned citizens. Additional, they would also be a part of the larger NCSJP Fellows community, which, in time, will grow to be a large and valuable alumni/ae group.

In order to facilitate this program, we plan to divide North Carolina into three geographic regions (Western, Central, and Eastern) and initially set-up one partner intuition in each zone, eventually expanding to three partner schools in each zone, giving us maximum exposure on both a geographic and population basis.  The ideal scenario would include on public, one private, and one historically black school in each region. We are in the process of figuring out the best way to identify potential students at our target schools.  We are particularly eager to recruit those individuals who reflect the communities we are most interested in serving, particularly racial minorities (which in NC constitute mostly those of African-American heritage, Latino heritage, and Native American heritage), and those members of LGBTQ community, particularly in more rural areas, where they are more likely to be isolated from, and discriminated by, the general population.