Lynn Barendsen, Project Director at Project Zero, writes "Visiting (or Revisiting) Solidarity" on September 11, 2020. Lynn Barendsen was an Inspirational Speaker for both the Summit and Seminar in 2019 and has conducted research on GCI's methodologies for Project Zero.
"Feelings of “companionship” or “belonging” can happen with individuals who are very different from ourselves. I’ve observed high school students from 15 different countries and varied socioeconomic backgrounds working together on service learning projects. As part of Global Citizens Initiative, rather than be separated by their differences, they gained a sense of shared community and purpose. They felt they “belonged” and as a result, felt a responsibility to one another. We’ve learned from our Good Project research that sense of responsibility to something greater than oneself is unusual in US high school students (see, for example Fischman et al, Making Good). Clearly service learning is not the only way to create positive belonging as opposed to confrontation and distrust;, but at its best, and at least in one powerful case, it may be that service learning can produce a sense of community, or solidarity, and help to inform one’s own identity as a result."
Read Barendsen's entire post on The Good Project Blog. The Good Project is one of the research initiatives housed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero