Reflections from the Studio on Community: It Takes a Village
The Harwood Studio on Community was established in 2017 to create the time and space within the Institute necessary to explore new areas and innovate around complex civic challenges, and to be a space where individuals can spend time at the Institute to develop their own ideas and skills.
The following reflections come from Ruth Haileselassie, a Virginia Commonwealth University graduate who joined the Institute as a Studio Associate for summer 2024 before her deployment to Namibia with the Peace Corps.
It truly does take a village to raise a child. I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2001. My earliest memories in life were not with my parents but instead with aunts, uncles, neighbors, housekeepers and drivers. I grew up in a small apartment with a door that was never shut, allowing family and friends to come and go throughout the day. The kids that lived below my floor taught me how to tie my shoes and the women next door hosted our birthday parties. I know firsthand the impact a roaring community has on the trajectory of a person's life, which is why I want to do work that ensures everyone has the opportunity to be a part of one.
What attracted me most to The Harwood Institute was the idea of Turning Outward as an approach to community building. I’ve always believed that our existence on this earth is meant to be spent understanding how we can aid one another rather than ourselves.
At the Institute, I assisted our researchers with gathering data and scheduling leadership interviews for the DeSoto County Coming Together: Unleashing the Community’s Potential report. While doing this, I realized that the majority of community leaders were not elected officials, instead they were shop owners, farmers, neighbors, and teachers.
For me, the single most pivotal moment during my time at the Institute was when I got the opportunity to travel to DeSoto County, FL to assist with the community conversations. I spent hours observing community members interacting with one another and my reactions to those observations surprised me. I found myself passing judgment on people whose stories I was here to learn. It was through a conversation with a colleague that I realized that my focus was misplaced. Instead of spending valuable energy criticizing people's response to their circumstances, it would be more useful to interrogate the factors that led them and their community to where they are today. It’s in human nature to have an emotional response to things we see or hear but if we want to be catalytic, we have a responsibility to stop and examine ourselves because our reactions inevitably inform our decisions, and those decisions need to move us forward.
Above all, my time at the Institute has shown me the power in Turning Outward. I intend to keep that at the forefront of my mind as I head into my Peace Corps service. By holding myself accountable for all I say and do, and consistently interrogating what it means to hold authority in the context of my community work, I trust that the decisions I make will prioritize the needs of my community over myself or my program.
