Tag Archives: social entrepreneurship

CIL@SF trip to meet Swarthmore alums in Silicon Valley

CIL@SF 2.0 = CIL@SF trip + supplemental course to

PEAC049: Be the Change! Social Entrepreneurship Principles in Practice

Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students. While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved.

Check out how to apply below!

INFO SESSION: Tuesday, November 27th, 12:30pm in Shane Lounge

APPLICATIONS DUE: Friday, November 30th by 11:59pm via Google Form below

Since 2015, the CIL has organized CIL@ SF, a trip for approximately 10 students to meet Swarthmore alums and tour tech related companies in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas. Students have had the opportunity to meet with entrepreneurial alumni who live and work in the region, to learn about their work and their workplaces, and engage with start-up, venture capital, and tech communities. In January 2018, CIL@ SF visited parents, alumni, and colleagues at Google HQ, Ancestry.com, Title Nine, DFJ Ventures, Stitch Fix, OpenTable, and Stanford University’s d.school.

This year the CIL@ SF trip has been redesigned to align more closely with current classes being taught in Swarthmore, and in 2019 will be delivered as a supplement course to PEAC049: Be the Change! Social Entrepreneurship Principles in Practice, delivered by Denise Crossan, Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change.

The CIL@ SF trip and supplement course is delivered as an engaged scholarship class. Preparatory classes and in-depth learning experiences combine to give students the opportunity to explore, examine and reflect on theory in practice. The required class preparation will consist of 4 classes of 2 hours duration delivered prior to Spring Break 2019. Students will be required to work in teams and individually to write short reflective reports on the learning experience throughout the course. PEAC049A is for zero credit as it is a supplement to PEAC049 for Spring Semester 2019.

CIL@ SF 2019 Learning Goals:

Through case studies, examine a number of society’s “wicked problems”. Explore the range of contributing issues to wicked problems and the methods employed to find solutions to seemly intractable issues.
Understand and explore the principles of social innovation as applied in a number of different scenarios.
Examine the knowledge base, experience and career paths of individuals who are social innovators across the public to private spectrum.

Who: 10 Swarthmore students
Where: Start-up, venture capital, and tech communities with a social entrepreneurship or innovation focus + more in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
When: March 10-16, 2019
Cost: $0. All travel, food, and accommodations are covered by the CIL

How to Apply

APPLY HERE + UPLOAD YOUR RESUME AND ESSAY

Registration for this supplemental class will be through a written online application and a short interview. Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students. While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved. To apply, students will be asked to submit:

A current resume (PDF)
An essay, no longer than 1,000 words, (PDF) answering the following questions
- What do you think you’ll gain from the CIL@ SF Trip?
- What would you most like to ask or learn from alumni working in social innovation and social entrepreneurship?

Applications will be reviewed by a CIL panel, and on first round selection based on the essay, students will be asked to attend a short interview. Only 10 students can go on the trip and must confirm that they are available and committed to travel on dates between March10-16, 2019 (Spring Break week). Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students. While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved.

Important Dates!

An Information Session on CIL@ SF will be held: Tuesday, November 27th, 12:30pm in Shane Lounge
Online applications should be submitted by: Friday November 30th by 11:59pm via Google Form above
Interviews will take place: the weeks of December 3rd/10th, Social Innovation Lab
Notification by: No later than December 17th

Please contact Katie Clark at kclark2 if you have any questions!

Social Innovation Lab opens at Lang Center, aims to branch out (Phoenix)

Congratulations to Prof. Denise Crossan and her students!

From The Phoenix
3 March 2018
By Abby Young

Social Innovation Lab opens at Lang Center, aims to branch out

In January 2017, the Social Innovation Lab at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility was created by visiting Lang Center professor Denise Crossan. Its purpose is to extend the Lang Center’s mission to promote engaged scholarship at Swarthmore. Currently, it is being used by groups from Chester and SwatTank as well as some Swarthmore student groups. One of the ways the lab is teaching these concepts is through Design Thinking trainings, which are courses about how to create social projects relating to a particular field of interest. Recently, Crossan and fellows have been promoting the lab as a space for students to visit.

“The Social Innovation Lab creates a space where the campus community can come to apply their deep and thoughtful theoretical knowledge into active practice focused on creating positive social impact. Learning and practicing problem solving skills within the Social Innovation Lab, such as Design Thinking, allows students to apply their Swarthmore education to complex real-world problems and better equips them for experiences post-graduation,” Crossan said.

Crossan renovated an office space and small library into a maker’s space filled with magnetic whiteboards, markers, crafting supplies, and a bin of cardboard. According to her, the space is designed for the creation of prototypes. Some of the prototypes on display in the lab are colorful, cardboard versions of imagined apps from Crossan’s social entrepreneurship class.

According to Michelle Ma ’20, a University Innovation Fellow who works with the Social Innovation Lab, the space is a natural extension of the classroom. This is an expansion of the Lang Center’s push for engaged scholarship, which is applying classroom learning to solve social issues in the world.

“We really want to push this idea of integrating your studies, what you care about, and making it more,” Ma said.

University Innovation Fellow Mariam Bahmane ’19 said that getting students to come to the lab is a current challenge they are facing. She said that even though Swat students are busy, many have dreams and projects, and the lab wants to create incentives for student attendance to help students find a balance between their studies and ideas for innovation.

“We [are working] to develop a whole spirit of the Social Innovation Lab and programs to get students into the culture of getting out of the library and their books and doing awesome things that they know and they learn about,” Bahmane said.

The maker’s space is still undergoing changes. According to Ma, some of these changes will include decorating the rooms, making the room more colorful, and adding to the currently plain walls. Crossan also said that the windows will have covers that are whiteboards.

“A lot of our efforts right now are focused on designing the space,” Ma said. “A lot of our goals are internal.”

Another goal that Ma emphasized was increased awareness and usage of the space, especially for students.

“We want more people to come in general. I stress this idea to just come and study… just experience the space,” she said.

However, the Social Innovation Lab is not just for individual students. University innovation fellow Natasha Markov-Riss ’20 said the maker’s space is open to any Swarthmore student.

“Individual students and various clubs also frequently inhabit the space — it is open to all. Even if you aren’t currently working on a project, the SIL provides a fantastic study environment,” she wrote.

Crossan said that Swarthmore faculty, staff, and the greater Swarthmore community are also free to use this space, and some groups from Chester are looking to collaborate with the Social Innovation Lab. SwatTank competitors are also encouraged to use the space.

Ma feels that the maker’s space can help faculty members innovate their lesson plans to make them more engaging for students and more applicable to what they care about. She stressed that the fellows at the Social Innovation Lab are eager for people on campus to use the new space that has been created and the supplies that they provide.

“We can’t work towards any necessary goal without people behind it,” she said.

The strategic plan for the first year of function outlines the goals of the Social Innovation Lab as education, experience, execution, and evaluation.

Crossan said that she wants to further educate students about the concepts of social innovation and entrepreneurship, and creative ways to apply them. One way that the Social Innovation Lab educates is Design Thinking Training, which are courses that teach potential innovators how to apply these abstract concepts. According to Markov-Riss, in the coming weeks, the Social Innovation Lab is running a Design Thinking session for the student group Kinetics.

“We tend to use Design Thinking as an underpinning methodology for students to really deeply understand what … community needs we have,” said Crossan.

Ma said that the Social Innovation Lab wants to help students understand concepts that may be difficult to define or apply to real life.

“We hear a lot about innovation, social change, and entrepreneurship and engaged scholarship but a lot of these terms are abstract. And the SIL wants to be a space where people can put their ideas to action,” Ma said.

According to Crossan, experience is built from engaged scholarship, which is the primary reason that she introduced this space in the Lang Center.

“The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility’s mission is to facilitate engaged scholarship on campus. That means engaging the community, the curriculum, and the campus, collectively,” she said.

This includes collaboration with other separate spaces on campus such as the new Swarthmore MakerSpace overseen by ITS in Beardsley Hall and the college’s libraries. Crossan said that the goal is to create a network of similar spaces throughout campus.

According to Crossan, the execution component of the Social Innovation Lab’s goals is that the maker’s space can be a place to incubate projects.

“One of the goals of the Social Innovation Lab is to create a space where Swarthmore Social Innovators (students, faculty, staff and community) can bring their projects to ‘live’ — that is, find a home, from a few weeks to months, where they can incubate their idea, share experiences with like-minded individuals, and receive dedicated support,” Crossan said.

The goal of evaluation is for students to reflect on their work.

“One of the big intentions for me is how do we take all that we’ve learned from what we do and turn it back into our knowledge,” said Crossan.

The goals of the Social Innovation Lab are part of its goal to help students turn their specialties, regardless of what they are, into social projects. Ma said that as a computer science major, she is developing the Social Innovation Lab’s website. According to Brahmane, her friend is trying to start a business that combines her love of baking and interest in biochemistry.

“With every area of study, there’s some application of your field that you find meaningful … We want to invite more people from all diverse backgrounds of life, whether it be a diverse identity or diverse major,” said Ma.

Despite the fact that the Social Innovation Lab is new, the University Innovation Fellows are positive about its future in cultivating a space for people to participate in engaged scholarship and social entrepreneurship.

“In the coming years, the SIL will become a well-used resource for students — I hope that the SIL is able to connect all of the innovators at Swat and support them as they build projects that reach beyond our campus,” Markov-Riss wrote.

“I see it as the birthplace of the next big entrepreneurs, innovators of the world,” said Brahame. “It would be a great starting spot for brilliance and sustainable big ideas.”

Visiting Lang Professor Denise Crossan Touts Social Entrepreneurship

By Ryan Dougherty
September 9th, 2015
Swarthmore College website

Is social entrepreneurship an oxymoron?

It has been for many philanthropists, who worry that building a business model will compromise their mission, and for businesspersons who deem the social part too “touchy feely.” But that’s changing, says Denise Crossan.

“Increasingly, I have students and community members coming to me saying, ‘I have this great business idea, and it’s also going to address a societal problem,’” she says. “There’s definitely space for both.”

Crossan will navigate students through that space as the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change this year, responding to a budding interest in doing well and doing good.

“There’s real appetite from students here who want to be engaged in giving back to society through sustainable enterprise,” she says. “It’s about building an organization that makes money that can be reinvested into social purpose or impact.”

Crossan is offering two courses this year through the Peace and Conflict Studies program. This fall, she is teaching a class on what social entrepreneurship is and how to engage in it. In the spring, she will teach a course she calls “finding your inner social entrepreneur,” targeting students who have identified a social issue to which they would like to apply a business model.

“It’s about giving them the space to convert their idea into a viable, sustainable enterprise that creates measurable social change,” says Crossan, emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of the subject.

“If anyone wants to have a conversation about their research or interests or work that might potentially spin out into social entrepreneurship and wants to come talk with me, I’d be delighted,” she says.

Crossan comes to Swarthmore from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Business, where she was appointed assistant professor of social entrepreneurship — the first post of its kind in Ireland — in 2009. However, it was her background as community business advisor for the European Union Program for Peace & Reconciliation that helped pave her way to Swarthmore.

John Van Til ’61, professor emeritus of urban studies and community planning at Rutgers University, Camden, was one of Crossan’s external examiners for her Ph.D. Noting her deep knowledge of community organizations in Northern Ireland, he mentioned that Swarthmore was looking for someone to set up a study abroad program there. Crossan’s discussions with Steven Piker, former professor of anthropology and advisor to the Off-Campus Study Office, and Rosa Bernard, assistant director of the Off-Campus Study Office, yielded a successful Northern Ireland Program based in Derry and Belfast that has sent 12 Swarthmore students to study peace and reconciliation with Trinity College students since 2005.

Visiting Swarthmore’s campus each year, Crossan developed admiration for the people and purpose of the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility.

“I thought, ‘We need the Lang Center in Ireland,’” she says. “They inspired me to work toward setting up the Trinity Centre for Social Engagement [pdf], which will foster social innovation and entrepreneurial action and help us to understand meaningful engagement in society.”

Crossan also sits on a panel of experts in social entrepreneurship for the European Commission, whose responsibilities include advising the commission on the development of the Social Business Initiative across the European Union. She is creating a digital map of social enterprise and eager to engage Swarthmore students in mapping social entrepreneurship in Philadelphia and beyond.

Before she could outline her academic plans for the coming year, though, Crossan had to overcome what she called the “information overload” of re-locating to the U.S.: “new house, new job, new car, new I.D.”

But since she was born and spent the first 10 years of her life in Ohio, it’s not all new.

“Things that I remember from when I was little are coming back to me,” she says. “It’s the small things, like the sounds of people cutting their grass at night or the bugs in the trees.”

And she already feels at home in the Swarthmore community.

“They’re just the most engaged and incredibly deep-thinking group of individuals you could possibly meet,” she says. “Even better, it comes without judgment. It’s an incredible institution with fabulous thinkers, which is also very humble, open to new thoughts and people and contributions. That, I absolutely love.”

Fall 2015 Line-up of Peace & Conflict Studies Courses

In addition to all of the excellent courses offered across campus that may be counted toward a minor in Peace and Conflicts Studies, our own program curriculum is expanding next year!

PEAC 015. Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies

In Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies, we learn that peace and conflict are not mutually exclusive. To paraphrase Conrad Brunk, the goal of peace and conflict studies is to better understand conflict in order to find nonviolent ways of turning unjust relationships into more just ones. We examine both the prevalence of coercive and non-peaceful means of conducting conflict as well as the development of nonviolent alternatives, locally and globally, through institutions and at the grassroots. The latter include nonviolent collective action, mediation, peacekeeping, and conflict transformation work. Several theoretical and philosophical lenses will be used to explore cultural and psychological dispositions, conflict in human relations, and conceptualizations of peace. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach with significant contributions from the social sciences. U.S.-based social justice movements, such as the struggle for racial equality, and global movements, such as nonviolent activism in Israel/Palestine, and the struggle for climate justice around the world, will serve as case studies.

1 credit. Tues/Thurs. 1:15-2:30 pm

Instructor: Sa’ed Atshan

PEAC 039. Social Entrepreneurship for Social Change (NEW COURSE!)

By integrating innovative approaches with revenue-generating practices, social entrepreneurs and their ventures open compelling and impactful avenues to social change. In this course, students will learn about the pioneering individuals and novel ways that social entrepreneurship responds to social needs that are not adequately served by the market or by the state through in-depth case analysis of social change work (locally, nationally, and globally).

1 credit. Mondays 1:15-4:00 pm

Instructor: Denise Crossan, Lang Professor for Social Change

PEAC 053. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (NEW COURSE!)

This course will examine the historical underpinnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how they have shaped the contemporary context in Israel/Palestine. We will approach this from a demography and population-studies framework in order to understand the trajectories and heterogeneity of Israeli and Palestinian societies and politics. For instance, how has the relationship between race and period of migration to Israel impacted Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Israeli sub-populations differently? What explains divergent voting patterns between Palestinian Christians and Muslims over time? How can we measure inequality between Israeli settlers and Palestinian natives in the West Bank in the present? The course will also synthesize competing theoretical paradigms that account for the enduring nature of this conflict. This includes—but is not limited to—the scholarly contributions of realist political scientists, US foreign policy experts, social movements theorists, security sector reformers, human rights advocates, international law experts, and negotiations and conflict resolution practitioners.

Eligible POLS and ISLM credit.

1 credit. Tues./Thurs. 2:40-3:55 pm

Instructor: Sa’ed Atshan

PEAC 071B. Research Seminar: Strategy and Nonviolent Struggle

(Cross-listed as POLS 081 and SOCI 071B)

This research seminar involves working with The Global Nonviolent Action Database built at Swarthmore College. This website is accessed by activists and scholars worldwide. The database contains crucial information on campaigns for human rights, democracy, environmental sustainability, economic justice, national/ethnic identity, and peace. Students will investigate a series of research cases and write them up in two ways: within a template of fields (the database proper) and also as a narrative describing the unfolding struggle. Strategic implications will be drawn from theory and from what the group is learning from the documented cases of wins and losses experienced by people’s struggles.

1 credit. Mondays 1:15-4:00 pm

Instructor: Lee Smithey

Dr. Denise Crossan to join Peace and Conflict Studies Program as Lang Professor

The Peace and Conflict Studies program is thrilled to join the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility in welcoming a new colleague in Peace and Conflict Studies for the 2015-2016 academic year!

Dr. Denise Crossan
Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change
2015-2016

As the Lang Professor, Dr. Denise Crossan will engage with alumni, community members, faculty, staff, and students through instruction, research, and engagement activities surrounding the topics of social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Dr. Crossan will offer two courses on social entrepreneurship in 2015-2016:

PEAC 039 Social Entrepreneurship for Social Change (Fall 2015)
PEAC 049 Be the Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Principle and Practice (Spring 2016)

Dr. Crossan joined the School of Business at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) in January 2009 as Ireland’s first Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship, and is the founding director of TCD’s new center, Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship. There she has taught courses such as “Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation: Organisation and Management,” and has consulted with many groups as they develop earned income strategies to sustain their work for the common good.

All members of the College community are encouraged to connect with Dr. Crossan during her time at Swarthmore as she is an incredible colleague with expertise in the areas of innovation, leadership, NGOs, social entrepreneurship, as well as strategic management and marketing.

Endowed by Eugene M. Lang ’38, the Lang Visiting Professorship brings to Swarthmore outstanding social scientists, political leaders, and social activists whose careers demonstrate sustained engagement with major issues of social justice, civil liberties, human rights, and democracy.

Along with the sponsoring academic program, Peace and Conflict Studies, this Lang Visiting Professorship is co-hosted by the Lang Center.

Nimesh Ghimire ‘15 Awarded Davis Project for Peace Grant to Establish ‘Peace Innovation Camp’ in Nepal

Congratulations to Nimesh Ghimire ‘15 for winning a Davis Project for Peace Award. Here is the organization’s press release:

106-year-old philanthropist renews Projects for Peace grants for college students

Swarthmore College Student Project to Provide a Wireless Internet Network and Runs a Week long ‘Peace Innovation Camp’ in Rural Nepal

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – College students across the country are once again being challenged to design and undertake “Projects for Peace” around the world, thanks to philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis. Now 106 years “young” Davis launched Projects for Peace on the occasion of her 100^th birthday in 2007 and has renewed her commitment every year since. In 2013, over $1.20 million will be awarded in $10,000 grants to students submitting the winning proposals for projects to be completed over the summer of 2013.

Davis is eager for motivated young people to come up with effective building blocks for peace-building in the world, and she is providing the money to make their plans a reality. Projects that address conflict resolution and reconciliation, foster understanding, provide opportunity, and build community are among the many successful endeavors to date.

Undergraduates at 90 partner schools of the Davis United World College Scholars Program (see www.davisuwcscholars.org), as well as those at International Houses Worldwide, Future Generations, the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and the University of Maine are invited annually to submit plans for Projects for Peace. Winning proposals selected from competitions at all these campuses are funded through Davis’ generosity.

“Competition is keen and we congratulate the students whose projects have been selected for funding in 2013,” said Philip O. Geier, executive director of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, which administers Projects for Peace. “Kathryn Davis feels a great urgency about advancing the cause of peace in the world, and she is investing in motivated youth and their ideas in order to accelerate efforts for peace in the 21^st century.”

Swarthmore College student, Nimesh Ghimire ‘15 proposes to use the Davis Projects for Peace grant to direct and establish a wireless internet network and run a week long ‘Peace Innovation Camp’ at Shree Gyanodaya Higher Secondary School in Sahilitar, a rural village of Lamjung district in western Nepal. The wireless network project will introduce a new world of technology to the village and the Peace Innovation Camp will allow the students with the creative freedom to design new, interesting projects to solve local peace-building challenges in their local communities. Both programs of the project will also strengthen the recently started Peace Innovation Lab (www.tinyurl.com/peaceinnovationlab) – Nepal’s first local peace innovation hub, located at the proposed school – as a resource hub to create, promote and sustain inclusive peace building efforts in Sahilitar village in Lamjung district. The project will start at the beginning of June and conclude in August, 2013.

“I want to use my birthday to once again help young people launch some initiatives that will bring new energy and ideas to the prospects of peace in the world,” said Davis. “My many years have taught me that there will always be conflict. It’s part of human nature. But love, kindness and support are also part of human nature, and my challenge to these young people is to bring about a mindset of preparing for peace instead of preparing for war.”

For more information on Projects for Peace, see www.davisprojectsforpeace.org.

Prof. Denise Crossan lecture on social entrepreneurship

The Creative Destruction of Capitalism and the Rise of Social Entrepreneurship

A lecture by

Dr. Denise Crossan

Assistant Professor in Social Entrepreneurship

School of Business

Trinity College Dublin

Regional Director of the Swarthmore College Northern Ireland Semester Programme

Monday, November 5, 2012

4:15 p.m.

Science Center 101

Maps and directions to Swarthmore College

An influential 2011 Harvard Business Review article hailed the re-construction of capitalism and the development of a “shared value” approach to business practice. In this talk, drawing on public policy initiatives around the world, Dr. Denise Crossan will explore the complexity of the concept of social entrepreneurship and review how the private sector and international governments are supporting and growing new organisational forms that strive to deliver an equally weighted social and economic return value for their stakeholders.

Dr. Denise Crossan was appointed to Trinity College Dublin’s School of Business in January 2009 as Assistant Professor in Social Entrepreneurship; the first post of it’s kind in Ireland. She currently teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and her research interests include mapping social entrepreneurship in an international context; the measurement of social value and ethical practice in social entrepreneurship; international public sector policies to grow social entrepreneurship and understanding corporate social responsibility and blurring sector boundaries.

In 2012 she received the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence, Highly Commended Award Winner, for her paper entitled “The Hologram Effect in Entrepreneurial Social Commercial Enterprises: Triggers and Tipping Points” published in the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development (Vol. 18, No. 4, 2011). Dr. Crossan’s in-field experience includes working as Community Business Advisor under the European Union’s Special Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland from 1996 to 2002, and Dr Crossan acts as the Regional Director of the Swarthmore College Northern Ireland Semester Programme.

Sponsored by Swarthmore’s Study Abroad Office, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology

THURSDAY Information Session: Northern Ireland Semester

Interested in conflict and peacebuilding? Social entrepreneurship and sustainable organizing?

Come learn about the Northern Ireland Semester, a study abroad program of Swarthmore College. We will hold an orientation session on Thursday, September 20th at 3:30 in SC145. Dr. Denise Crossan (Trinity College Dublin), our in-country supervisor and instructor, will join us via Skype.

The program provides students a unique opportunity to study conflict, ongoing peacebuilding efforts, and social entrepreneurship in local communities in Northern Ireland, a region in a critical transition after 30 years of violent political and ethnic struggle. Students work (for supervised credit) within local community organizations while studying conflict, peace, and reconciliation at the Irish School for Ecumenics of Trinity College at its Belfast campus. Community placements can be tailored to fit your particular academic interests (e.g. theatre as peacebuilding, culture and conflict, transitional politics, segregated education, cross-border economics, etc.)

The Northern Ireland Semester is based in two geographic locations, Derry / Londonderry or Belfast, but student involvement with community groups may take place elsewhere in Northern Ireland. Students may register for one semester or two, and further possibilities for summer research and /or service work may arise.

Visit the Northern Ireland Semester website where you can read more about the program, including student contributions to the program’s blog.

All students are welcome to participate in the program. For Peace and Conflict Studies students, all four credits may be applied toward the minor.

Download, print, and hang a flyer, and invite your friends!

Information for this and other programs is available in the Off-Campus Study Office Visit the OCSO web site.

Contact: Lee Smithey at lsmithe1 or Rosa Bernard at rbernar1

Culture and conflict in Northern Ireland. Photo credit: Lee Smithey

Bonfires and national flags, such as this Union Jack and the Tricolour on the hill, assert political claims and identities in Northern Ireland

One of our own, Theresa Williamson ’97, returns to talk about community development in Rio de Janeiro

Theresa Williamson ’97 graduated with a minor in Peace and Conflict Studies, and she is coming back home to tell us about her work with Catalytic Communities, a development organization she founded and directs. Come to her talk on December 5 in the Scheuer Room.

Catalytic Communities: Entrepreneurship in Community Development in Rio de Janeiro

A Talk by Theresa Williamson ‘97

Theresa Williamson '97

Monday, December 5, 2011

4:30 p.m.

Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall

(maps and directions)

Theresa Williamson will discuss her work after Swarthmore in creating Catalytic Communities (CatComm), a successful nonprofit organization supporting Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities. Founded in 2000, CatComm has provided communications, networking and training support to over 1500 leaders from over 250 different neighborhoods across Rio.

Since 2009 CatComm, has been increasingly recognized as a watchdog organization as Rio prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, and local officials begin intervening significantly in the city’s favelas.

Williamson will discuss the organization’s development with a particular emphasis on the organizational philosophy that made it possible to adapt quickly to a rapidly changing urban policy shift and evolving needs of its community partners, all within the setting of one of the most dynamic cities in the world today. Topics Williamson will include in her talk: Rio de Janeiro, slum upgrading, alternative and mainstream media, nonprofit management, urban planning, and dynamism.

Theresa Williamson received her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and has published articles in Progressive Planning, The Journal of Urban Technology, and Cidadania.org. Williamson is the founder and executive director of Catalytic Communities and received her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore in Biological Anthropology.

CatComm has been working extensively around issues of forced evictions as Rio prepares for the Olympics.

Sponsored by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Peace and Conflict Studies, Alumni Relations, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Latin American Studies