Originally published February 27, 2015
By Lisa Y. Garibay
UTEP News Service
A movement begun by compassionate students has grown to embrace and educate the world.
UTEP’s Social Justice Initiative (SJI) – which is housed within the Department of Communication – came out of a vigil organized by the Indian Student Association after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Students from all over campus were drawn to it and began to brainstorm how that energy could move forward and outward to more causes.
“Almost everything we do starts like that – organically and with the phrase, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we …’ The key is in the doing and in the creative budgeting,” said Lucía Durá, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, one of the co-founders of SJI alongside professor of Communication Arvind Singhal, Ph.D.
As its ripple effect continues to be felt in ever-widening circles across the globe, SJI continues to enrich students’ experiences at UTEP while connecting them to the rest of the world.
One of SJI’s latest developments, the Roshan Lal Chandna Just Citizen Scholars Leadership Program, received funding to bring together 16 UTEP undergraduate and graduate students representing more than a dozen programs of study.
Chemistry sophomore Jacobo Garcia was chosen for the first cohort in fall 2014.
“Considering my deep belief in social justice, I saw joining the SJI program as a great opportunity to engage, and more importantly, act in social justice,” he said. “It has helped me to prepare for the real world by expanding my awareness to social injustices all around the world, and being able to appreciate the opportunities I have.”
Durá explained that SJI works to cultivate relationships locally and abroad that enable this work to happen at what she refers to as a “glocal” level. The work flourishes through that “creative budgeting” as well as generous patrons, including Henri Lipmanowicz.
For the fourth consecutive year, Lipmanowicz and his family’s foundation gifted $20,000 to SJI, which included a $10,000 match from Merck, where he served as president of the company’s intercontinental and Japan regions.
After visiting campus for the first time in 2010 when UTEP co-hosted a conference for Lipmanowicz’s Plexus Institute, the management expert was hooked.
“I got to meet some of the students involved in the SJI program and heard the stories of what they were doing,” he said. “I was impressed by their commitment and their appreciation of the special needs locally and elsewhere. I also was impressed by what they were doing while operating on a shoestring. It was clear that they cared deeply. Those were not just projects to look good on their résumés.”
Lipmanowicz isn’t shy about sharing how he feels about El Paso’s university.
“I have a greater emotional connection to UTEP where I never studied than I do with the universities where I was a student,” he said.
This funding turns out an astounding amount of resources for students and opportunities to spread the word about SJI on a global level.
“It’s all a web of relationships,” Singhal said. “People reach out to us, we invite people and magic happens.”
For example, a dozen scholars from Japan’s Kumamoto University came to campus for a week in September 2014 to learn Liberating Structures as well a problem-solving approach known as Positive Deviance, which SJI is a global leader in.
“I have found that the work being done by SJI and its involvement of students is wonderful,” said Kumamoto University Associate Professor Yoko Kawamura. “Students tell me that it changed their perspective toward life.”
SJI’s presence was felt at British parliament in August 2014 when Singhal spoke about his work at UTEP. Singhal will lead a two-day meeting of government officials, hospital CEOs, private foundations, congregation leaders, activists and scholars at the White House using Liberating Structures to help foster ideas for community-based health care.
While it is easy to see that SJI’s work has a far reach, perhaps its greatest impact comes from bringing this global connectivity back home. Its programming, publications and entrepreneurial actions bring together people from the UTEP campus with global activists, leaders and educators.
During the previous academic year, SJI hosted five internationally renowned guests ranging from leadership coaches to former CEOs to artists; held leadership and Liberating Structures workshops for UTEP and the wider community; and presented its cornerstone Just Story Hour, which is in its third year.
The networking and constant evolution of the initiative improves quality of life off-campus through the likes of partnerships with the YWCA Paso Del Norte Region.
YWCA CEO Sandra E. Braham, Ph.D., noted that SJI’s Liberating Structures training helped her team redesign the agency’s new employee orientation in record time, getting to the heart of what mattered most and ensuring the organization’s values were reflected in every step. She also has taken what she learned to her board of directors’ retreat and in work with partner organizations Avance and the El Paso chapter of The Links Inc.
Collaborations like the one between SJI and the YWCA demonstrate how a student’s participation in the initiative provides an essential education.
Victor Santana-Melgoza, who is pursuing his master’s degree in communication while running a social justice consultancy, feels he will be taking critical tools with him along with his diploma thanks to SJI.
“The biggest tool I have gained in my time with SJI is using inventive ways to create the space where solutions can be explored to some of society’s most difficult issues,” he said.