Symposium to Explore Links Between Academics and Organizations

Smith College's Center for Mutual Learning, an organization that works with grassroots groups throughout the Americas on collaborative research and community-based learning, will sponsor a two-part symposium on Friday, Oct. 16, titled "Mutual Learning: Decolonizing Communities."

The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will raise issues concerning the interface between universities and community organizations and the possibilities for collaboration in scholarly work.

"Mutual learning is not so much learning about as learning with," explains Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, professor of anthropology, who co-directs the Center with Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of Philosophy.

"You gain self-knowledge as you gain knowledge of the other. It doesn't start with a research agenda but rather with the idea that you both can be transformed by learning," she adds.

The first part of the symposium, "Sustaining Cape Ann: The Case of Wellspring House, Gloucester, Massachusetts," will take place in Seelye 201 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. The second part, "Sustaining Indigenous Life: The University and Native American Communities," will take place from 7:30 to 10 p.m., also in Seelye 201.

Wellspring House is a community organization that adheres to principles and methods of feminism and participatory democracy. It is "a model for community organizations not only because it has existed for 17 years, all the while successfully expanding its vision, but also because it has done so without becoming simply another service organization," says Addelson.

Founded in 1981 as a place offering hospitality to people dealing with a life crisis and needing housing or other assistance, Wellspring House has over the years created educational programs and a land trust dedicated to developing affordable housing and local economic enterprises. It offers workshops, lectures and, through its Veronese Community Education Resource Center, a full-time, 26-week course teaching women basic math, grammar, writing, critical thinking and career skills.

Speakers at the first session will be a co-founder of Wellspring House and two women who are participants in Wellspring House programs. Carolyn Jacobs, associate dean at the Smith School for Social Work and adjunct associate professor in Afro-American studies, will be the moderator.

Participants in the second session all come from Native American communities in the Andes with the exception of one from Oaxaca, Mexico. The session will be moderated by Jorge Ishizawa of the Andean Project for Peasant Technologies and Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru.

The symposium is supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and by the Five College Native American Indian Studies Committee, Five Colleges, Hampshire College Program for Fieldwork in the Southwest and Mexico, Mount Holyoke Department of Anthropology and the Smith departments of anthropology and philosophy.

For more information or to attend the symposium, call (413) 585-3511.