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BOUNDARY
SPANNING
Life
Experiences Leading to Valuing Diversity, Embracing Community,
Needs
Sensing, and Environmental Scanning
Organizational
Boundary Spanning
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As an Employment Training Specialist at Union High School,
my job has included many boundary spanning activities:
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Liaison to job-skill training sites
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Liaison to community-based organizations to develop service
learning and volunteering opportunities for students.
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Liaison to businesses to develop work-based learning opportunities
for students.
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Co-chair of the Kent County Community Transition Council:
a network group of transition services providers from over 30 schools
and 10 community-based and government organizations.
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Co-chair of JAM 2002-2005 Student Transition Conferences.
The JAM (Jobs, Awareness, and Motivation) Conference is an annual
conference for 450 students with disabilities from 31 Kent County
schools (Public, Private, and Charter) coming to GRCC to hear over
45 speakers from business, industry, government, and community-based
organizations.
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Master's in Management degree: learned alongside a cohort of corporate
managers
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Delta Strategy: participant in community development
with area businesses, community-based organizations, and government
agencies.
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Michigan Organizing Project: participant in addressing
social justice issues together with members of 20 area churches and
neighborhood organizations.
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Experience Exchange: for description see portfolio
item “Community
Development Involvement .”
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Career Pathways Design Team: for description see
portfolio item “Community
Development Involvement.”
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Tremendous value and
wisdom can be drawn from diversity.
For
an organization to become a closed system or a functional silo,
growth
and development is stunted leading to stagnation, to entropy, and ultimately
to ruin.
In
the Twenty-First Century, the only viable, sustainable way to meet
the tremendous needs of our communities is through collaboration.
Through
spanning the boundaries of organizations
silos
of practice must become communities of practice.
Racial
Boundary Spanning
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Union High School: staff member of an urban high
school that has students from over 40 countries represented in its
student body and where the white majority is a minority among its
students.
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Summit on Racism: for description see portfolio item
"Community Development Involvement."
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Racial Reconciliation Workshop: for description see
portfolio item "Community Development
Involvement."
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Multiethnic Family: My children and I represent three
different races.
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Multiethnic Churches: Member for 27 years and have
served on church council. Both churches are committed to intentional
racial reconciliation. This is deliberate and is seen in its staffing
practices, neighborhood impact, and its 30+ year model of integrated
leadership. These churches represent people from over 30 different
nations.
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Neighborhoods: I have intentionally lived in neighborhoods
where my race is non-majority for over 20 years.
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Breakfast Club participant: the breakfast club gives
structure and guidance to getting together people of different races,
one-on-one, to discuss sensitive issues of race. The purpose is to
build relationships and to foster greater understanding of those who
are different from us.
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For
me, racial reconciliation is not an option.
It
is not good enough for me to just say,
"I
am not prejudiced" or
"I
am not racist."
It
must be visible; something I do.
Racial
reconciliation must be intentional and deliberate;
individually,
organizationally, and community-wide.
Economic
Boundary Spanning
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Career
Development Services: As
an entrepreneur and independent consultant, I work in high schools
throughout Kent County, providing KISD WIA Youth Services to youth
in poverty. |
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Union High School: Two thirds of the students I spent
time with daily for six years were qualified to receive free or reduced
lunches; a measure of economic means.
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Degage Ministries: I have volunteered over the past
25 years and have been on staff as an Evening Supervisor at Degage
Coffee House; a ministry that engages homelessness, extreme poverty,
and the disenfranchised of society.
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Single Father: I raised my oldest son alone as a
single father with an income that qualified me for services for the
economically disadvantaged.
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I
have friends and family that are upper class and in poverty.
Life's
experiences and choices have allowed me to feel poverty,
both
in others and in myself.
This
capacity . . .
to
navigate across boundaries and learn from all
. . . is life's gift.
Relational
Boundary Spanning
I
have befriended, mentored, and been mentored by people with down syndrome,
dwarfism, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, paraplegia, quadriplegia, bipolar
depression, borderline personality, autism, and friends that have fought
and lost against aids, cancer, and Multiple Sclerosis. I have learned
deeply from each of them.
Diversity
is a gift.
We
must learn to value diversity.
We
must learn to embrace diversity.
Not
only in our racial attitudes
but
also in the input we seek for resolving daily conflicts;
not
only in how we accept peoples' appearance
but
also in how we accept and embrace differences
in
personalities, ideas, and opinions;
as
well as values and beliefs.
Only
by spanning boundaries can we learn
. . . and see beyond ourselves.
~Ron
Irvine
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