E4A: Individual Growth and Social Change

IN 1970, during my freshman year, I asked an upperclassman why Harvard seemed to provide so little help for people who wanted to live and study off campus. "Harvard doesn't send people into the world," he said, "because Harvard thinks it is the world."

If Harvard, as an institution, often seems to represent that attitude, Radcliffe, in 1966, created one of the University's several exceptions to the rule. Mary I. Bunting, former president of Radcliffe College, founded Education for Action (E4A) to provide "earlier opportunities (for students) to test and develop capabilities that are not called into play by their academic assignments." She established a program of student summer internships with Peace Corps volunteers working abroad.

Seven years later, E4A is drastically different from the organization Bunting originally conceived. Its growth and change clearly reflect a more realistic view of the world beyond Harvard's reassuring walls. But, just as critically, E4A reflects the difficulties inherent in running a program of cooperative, student- controlled educational activities in a competitive University traditionally emphasizing other goals.

E4A's program currently involves three main kinds of activity: operating a clearinghouse for students seeking information on social action projects, sponsoring workshops and seminars on social and political issues, and helping to fund individual student- designed projects in a wide range of areas of social change.

It is the clearinghouse which has the potential for reaching the most students, and students associated with E4A say they wish more people would use its resources. The information center occupies a cramped office on the first floor of Aggasiz House, housing extensive files on educational innovation and on workshops and conferences on social issues. E4A offers access to probably the largest library on Latin American affairs on campus, dozens of publications on domestic and Third World politics, information on volunteer openings and opportunities for "alternative" careers, and publications which E4A sells on different aspects of social involvement.

The seminar program is E4A's latest addition, consisting, this semester, of two non-credit courses on China and Latin America. Though these discussion groups provide more continuity than one-time-only programs which E4A has run occasionally in the past, both groups are small and one is irregularly attended.

Shepherd Bliss, E4A project director and the coordinator of the Latin America group, said some students were apparently surprised to find a non-credit seminar demanding more of a commitment than regular courses. An advantage of his group, though, according to Bliss, is the contact it affords Harvard-Radcliffe students with people interested in Latin American issues from the local community and other colleges.

E4A, said Bliss, would probably offer more seminars if students asked the organization to provide programs unavailable elsewhere in the University. "We don't want our courses to be any less productive or useful than other courses," said Bliss, "but, if the resources are available, we will try to fulfill student requests."

But E4A's most unique function remains the support it affords student-initiated summer projects and, since 1968, term-time projects on social change. By last September, E4A had funded over 250 projects bringing students into contact with social action in communities in the United States and abroad.

Decisions on funding-like all E4A policy decisions-are made by the Student Board which controls the organization. Though they hire a project director to handle most day-to-day administrative tasks, the board's members-there are usually about ten-set the direction for E4A's activities and philosophy. Some guidance is provided by an Advisory Board of faculty, students, and alumni chosen for their involvement in education and social action. But E4A's aim is to provide organizational and policy-making experience for undergraduates, and a student-run structure sensitive to the needs of the students involved with it.

This Spring, two meetings were held to review term-time project proposals. Another will be held on summer project proposals after the April 23 deadline for submitting applications. Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates who have planned summer projects will be interviewed individually. They will then present their projects to the board members and to each other as a group, to give all students submitting applications the benefit of the entire group's suggestions. Board members must evaluate the suitability of each project for E4A funding and the likelihood that the project will help both the applicant and the people with whom the applicant plans to work.

THE PHILOSOPHY behind E4A funding is central to the direction of the organization as a whole. In earlier years, E4A-and most social activists-thought the most constructive short-term experience would be a kind of "internship," working for social action agencies which couldn't otherwise provide students with salaries. The concept of a viable social project now centers on three criteria: the project's potential for advancing positive social change, its potential for enhancing the personal growth of the people undertaking projects, and the development of original student-initiated projects whose means seem well-designed for attaining the desired ends.

E4A projects thus no longer fall under the heading "social service." Rather than enrolling volunteers in already established structures whose relationship to the people they serve is unlikely to change through the person's involvement, E4A wants to help students to create new relationships among social activists and between activists and the disenfranchised sectors of society. Rather than trying to teach students about how things already work, E4A seeks people whose activities will educate themselves and the people they work with to the kinds of skills and relationships necessary to effect social change.

The political side of E4A's activities lies in its conception of education-the orientation of the individual and the direction of the person's growth towards greater involvement in the community in which the person lives. In this sense, E4A has goals which may be called political: the creation of cooperative relationships among social activists and community people; help for groups trying to overcome the difficulties in using resources controlled by hierarchical bureaucracies; enabling students to create fulfilling work roles in society; helping students to overcome the sense of fragmentation in their social interests and academic lives; and providing aid to people working for a healthier society in which all people's views of themselves as citizens are broader than the narrowly individualistic attitudes customary in U.S. society. E4A is based on the concept that only through intense social involvement can the individual's human nature be expressed. Though the organization's name is "Education for Action," its philosophical assumption might be called "education through action."

Generalizing further about the political inclinations of E4A is impossible because the attitudes of board members and the kinds of projects funded cover such a wide range of interests and expectations. Projects have focused on problems of public and mental health, drug abuse, prison education, economic and cultural development, civil rights, tenants' disputes, women's issues, and community education.

LAST SUMMER, several students worked to organize food co-ops for lower-income communities, working with either groups of students or independent community groups. Two students began a film on black working class experience. A Radcliffe sophomore helped a "videotape collective" to use videotape equipment in new educational and anti-crime programs in Cambridge and Roxbury.

Two students worked specifically on problems of women, one helping a group of divorced mothers to organize a handbook on the problems of divorce, another helping the Pregnancy Counseling Service in Boston. Other students initiated projects geared to the problems of black and Chicano workers: two people worked to improve minority health care; another two helped Detroit factory workers to organize a credit union. E4A funded one senior who traveled to Washington, D.C., to help in Ralph Nader's investigation of Congress; another student went home to Kenya to try to help local coffee- growers organize a cooperative.

Each of the projects involved its own successes and frustrations. Many students ran head-long into the morass of bureaucratic decision-making, which often slowed projects down or made their objectives unattainable. Some students were frustrated by the short-term nature of their projects; having gotten so far, many found they lacked the time to get as far as they would have liked.

People reacted in different ways to their experiences. Several students working with community organizing groups felt immediately at home and were put to work in many of the groups' activities. Another student reported finding his group hostile to "students and outsiders in general:" "I felt that I had to work hard to overcome any suspicions about another student hanging around...It is...a strange feeling to be among a group of people who know each other and trust each other and not be a part of the group."

But that student and others overcame the hostilities of people they worked with, which, like the limited time the summer makes available, is an endemic problem of short-term projects. In his project report, he listed four factors contributing to his eventual success: his willing acceptance of a subordinate role in the organization, a recognition of the limitations imposed by the nature of his brief involvement with the group, the openness of the people with whom he worked once they felt he wasn't trying to take things over, and his general agreement with the group on political matters.

"The hope must be for some limited effectiveness," he wrote, "and for an opportunity to learn and see the inside operation without having to make a long-term time commitment. In fact, a summer grant is a true luxury in the field of radical social change."

The experience of this student and others reflect two of the greatest obstacles which E4A must continually overcome: the small number of people it can serve in the University and off-campus, and the constraints which short-term project work inevitably makes necessary. The third chief obstacle is also a continual preoccupation-finding the money necessary to fund E4A and to serve more students by expanding the group's activities.

During its first three years, E4A operated primarily on two successive Ford Foundation grants totalling $50,000. After E4A's first year of operation, Radcliffe assumed the group's administrative costs.

Since the Ford grants ran out, E4A has received a number of smaller foundation grants, the largest coming from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation-three successive grants of $10,000 each. These grants have been devoted entirely to funding student projects, but the Student Board next year will face funding difficulties again.

The Noyes Foundation has told E4A that this coming year's grant will be its final donation, according to Arthur Dudley '73, a student board member involved in fund-raising. E4A's recent appeal to smaller foundations in the Massachusetts area has so far yielded little response.

Another problem is the uncertainty of the University's continued support. Though Radcliffe President Horner, in an interview, said she hopes Radcliffe can continue to fund E4A as one of Radcliffe's retained functions under the "non-merger merger," the status of the organization under a new contract to come is unclear. Furthermore, while Bunting and Horner both express, as Horner said, a long-term interest in "student-initiated, student-run kinds of projects," the priorities of Harvard in negotiating a joint budget with Radcliffe are less clear.

Despite these difficulties, the favorable aspects of E4A's program, its considerable successes, and the board members' understanding of the limited effectiveness they can have in social change all contribute to a general sense among E4A members of satisfaction with the program's direction and cautious optimism for its future.

BLISS ATTRIBUTES much of the organization's success to the soundness of Bunting's original vision. Though E4A's outlook on the world always changes, it was originally founded, Bliss feels, on a principle of social initiative which underlies the students' own philosophy and the success of E4A's projects. Bliss also believes that the commitment of Presidents Hunting and Horner to E4A has been instrumental in facilitating the group's own creative energies.

The cooperative spirit of E4A shows most clearly perhaps in E4A's success in recruiting students to serve on its board. The board has consistently comprised roughly half women and half men, and its members reveal a wide range of extracurricular and political interests. Most of them appear to have taken on substantial time commitments to E4A in addition to unusually busy calendars.

In addition, most students working on the board developed their interest out of E4A projects. This has enabled E4A to attract more and more younger board members, which should help the group establish a stronger sense of continuity.

Another contributing factor to E4A's success, as Dudley expressed it, is the interest shown by great numbers of people in the idea and activities of E4A, even when these people are unable to contribute money. Horner says she thinks E4A is "serving real kind of needs," and that "the opportunity for off-campus learning at the present moment is very important."

Despite the cynical remark of the upperclassman I quoted earlier, Harvard's attitude also seems to be shifting towards greater emphasis on off-campus learning. Francis D. Fisher '47, director of the recently-created Office for Career Services and Off-Campus Learning, said he is "very much aware" of the activities of E4A and that he spoke at length to Judith Newman, former E4A project director, about the organization's activities and the opportunities it makes available for students.

But the most persistent aspect of E4A's success is its emphasis on the human quality of its activities. E4A doesn't measure success in literal terms by measuring final achievements against a project's original goals, Dudley said. Rather, E4A asks if the individual involved has personally grown in awareness and whether, in some measure, the projects have contributed to social change. E4A, according to Bliss, is oriented to meeting the needs of people-people in the University and people in the communities which students hope to serve.

IT CAN CERTAINLY be said-and several board members did say-that E4A is certainly not going to change the world singlehandedly. Edward J. Warshauer '73, a new board member, says he sees his role as one of trying to get E4A's money to fulfill whatever positive needs it can in limited ways.

But E4A has touched the lives of many students and community people. Some students have helped establish totally new community services. One elderly woman involved in a food cooperative organized last year by Devorah Hexdall, wrote to E4A: "I am very pleased with the fruits and vegetables, also the boys and girls that work for the co-op. I hope they keep up the good work as we could use a lot more people like them to make a better place to live in."

In a too-often-cloistered University which frequently seems to think it is the world, such small successes in another world appear great, indeed.

'E4A's aim is to provide organizational and policy-making experience for undergraduates, and a student-run structure sensitive to the needs of the students involved with it.'

'The political side of E4A's activities lies in its conception of education and the direction of the person's growth towards greater involvement in the community in which the person lives.'