STUDENTS SHOULDER TO SHOULDER PHILOSOPHY!

MISSION:

Students Shoulder to Shoulder's (SStS) mission is to inspire high school students to engage in responsible global citizenship through on-line study, full immersion service programs, and public presentation. Yet, SStS's philosophical underpinnings, educational programming, and economic structure, are profoundly more than providing youth with an opportunity to do community service in other cultures, as noble as that might be. SStS is a prescriptive educational program, a catalyst to connect the moral imagination of youth to the global community that is imminently theirs. SStS provides cogent opportunities for adolescents to engage their creativity, knowledge, curiosity, and energy with the purpose of preparing themselves and their generation for responsible, intelligent, and compassionate global citizenship. The program's curriculum core, developed by SStS staff and tailored for each trip, is shaped by the traditional academic perspectives of economics, culture, politics, ethics and geography. We refer to this aspect of our program as the "Five Lenses of SStS". Trip leaders use these five disciplines to develop pre-trip, on-site, and post-trip curricula.

NGO PARTNERSHIPS

In the "SStS Business Plan" one will find that the organizational model creatively and cost effectively partners with organizations already established in service work. Our individual trips, for instance, are developed in cooperation with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) whose particular missions have taken them to areas where they believe they can affect sustainable change. The leadership team of SStS spends countless hours researching and interviewing individual NGO's to ensure a kindred philosophical spirit. All projects are regionally inspired, locally supported, and aligned with basic principles of sustainability. We believe that for SStS students, direct learning through cultural immersion and civic project work, "shoulder-to-shoulder" with "locals," is what has proven to compel participants to search for a deeper understanding of stubborn, endemic issues of poverty. As important as understanding the site-specific and universal variables that contribute to the very reasons that bring us around the globe, SStS students learn directly from passionate, intelligent leaders of already established organizations immersed in mission driven efforts. An important component of each trip is for students to speak with the directors and project managers of each sponsoring NGO - some of the most meaningful learning is done in the field, shovel in hand, NGO member with SStS student! Our students are also trained to recognize and harness rich learning opportunities. Imagine teaching reading to first graders in Nepal or rebuilding a home in New Orleans. Envision engaging NGO partners with questions such as "Why do you do what you do?" "What makes this effort sustainable?" "What needs are yet to be met?" Our deliberate intention is to provide field experience for future leaders, to guide students toward authentic, meaningful learning.

FIVE LENSES

After a working relationship is established with a sponsoring NGO, a trip leader is selected and charged with developing pre-trip educational experiences. Through learning modules that include seminars, presentations from field experts, and discussions of pertinent literature, students develop insight into their particular trip's purpose through exposure to and consideration of the economic, cultural, ethical, political, and geographic variables that contribute to issues endemic poverty. The "Five lenses of SStS" learning framework is enhanced throughout the trip with evening reflections, journal writing, meetings with in-country leaders, project work with locals, and student-led discussions. During the trip and following its conclusion, students construct a presentation for their schools, the general public, and, when possible, younger (elementary) students. In these assemblies, SStS students share their experience through the "five lenses."

ECONOMIC MODEL

SStS's economic model is consistent with its selfless mission. Trip leaders' costs are funded by SStS, yet their hours of pre-trip curriculum planning, in-country leadership and post-trip guidance are done in service of our mission with no compensation. Administrative costs are funded by Vail Mountain School. Essentially, we have removed any profit motive. Our volunteer staff, like the NGO's with whom we partner, are mission driven. Students' fees go directly to their individual trip. Student participants are asked to raise 20% of these costs through employment, and families are asked to cover the remainder of costs. To minimize financial exclusion, believing that future world leaders are not limited to upper economic levels, SStS pursues funding through grants and angel donors to provide financial assistance. 

Equally important in the economic model is the inclusion of participants in understanding the funding structure of SStS. In addition to each group having a pre-trip session that details the basic structure of their sponsoring, non-profit partner (for some trips this occurs on site), students will also learn about the philanthropic resources that make SStS possible. SStS believes that developing authentic leadership means including its participants in every aspect of the program. Additionally, insight into the philanthropic support of SStS - the mechanisms as well as the motivation - appropriately shapes the relationship between philanthropy and service, resulting in deeper understanding and inspired obligation.

HISTORY

Our first year of programming in 2007 partnered thirty participants with three NGO's in three diverse settings. NGO members, students, and trip leaders returned inspired by their experiences and confident that the goals of SStS are both noble and efficacious. In the program's second year, our participants represented five schools from two states. During the summer of 2009 SStS added Kenya to our destinations, expanded its trip leader training program, and enhanced the use of technology in all aspects of programming. The result was an increase in student participation from eleven schools throughout the country. Students Shoulder to Shoulder became a tax deductible 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization in 2009.

FUTURE

This year our intention is to include youth from multiple nations. Imagine internationally integrated youth groups first progressing through pre-trip curriculum via various technology media, then meeting for protracted in-country service work, and finally culminating the experience with a combined presentation of their enlightened perspective (via technology) to their individual, international communities! When SStS was conceived, never did we consider competing in an already established niche of youth travel programs. The scores of programs with this singular purpose are flourishing in their particular markets. From the beginning, however, SStS was in search of what John Dewey called the "moral purpose of schools" and, by extent, a program that would provide nurturing and direction to the universal leadership potential of youth. Since 2007, the rich anecdotal data suggests our mission is being advanced through every student and trip leader.

TESTIMONIAL

The following is from an SStS student and leader (India '07, Nepal '08, Nepal '09 co-trip leader) who currently studies International Diplomacy at St. Andrews University:

 "While few youth have a chance to learn about issues of ethics, even fewer have a chance to put their learning to use. High school students no longer have to be stuck with the knowledge that the problems of humanity are their problems too. SStS helps provide a clear, concrete, and adequate response to the conclusion that they are my neighbors, and I owe them what I can give them. During an SStS trip, in fact, the notion of 'they' and 'neighbors' starts to dissolve into a feeling of 'we' and 'co-workers.' At some point, it really doesn't matter where anyone comes from. The only thing that matters is that they give a damn, and so do you, and that's why you both ended up together in Ladakh, or Nepal, or New Orleans, or Bolivia, or Kenya. In fact, pretty much the only thing that makes walking through the squalor and poverty bearable is that you are doing something small to start changing it, and so is the kid walking next to you." (Joely)

Her experience and subsequent shifting of worldview characterizes the majority of Students Shoulder to Shoulder alumni. The plethora of anecdotal data from participants, trip leaders, NGO's and parents speaks clearly to the relationship between our mission and our approach.

PURPOSE

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, writes about our global society flourishing or perishing "according to our ability to find common ground across the world on a set of shared objectives and on the practical means to achieve them" (Common Wealth, 2008). We believe that SStS serves Mr. Sachs's call for global cooperation through direct training of the generation that will inherit stewardship of our global community. Mr. Sachs describes the "main problem [as] not the absence of reasonable and low-cost solutions, but the difficulty of implementing global cooperation to put those solutions in place." SStS's curriculum, programming, and partnerships with non-government organizations combine to allow small international groups of inspired youth to appreciate the power of "global cooperation" 
- through engagement in global citizenship.