Starving for Wisdom

By Corrina Grace, SERES co-founder, Executive Director and Practitioner-in-Residence at University of California, Irvine. In this age, when in the words of E.O.Wilson we are “drowning in information, while starving for wisdom”, SERES seeks to answer the compelling and critical question: what is the essential learning that we must provide to our young people whose coming of age is marked by such profound environmental and humanitarian crises? Over the last few months, this inquiry has led us to dive deeper into the relationship and connection between youth community leaders in Guatemala and El Salvador (those youth that choose to stay) with first- and second-generation Latino students in southern California (those whose families chose to leave) through a series of pilot Communiversity Learning Journeys with the University of California, Irvine. The communiversity concept emerges from the SERES Center in Guatemala, a 25-acre sustainability learning and leadership center that is currently in design phase. “Communiversity” as we imagine it is a place-based learning experience that brings together young leaders from geographically distinct but highly interdependent regions, providing a safe space for learning, authentic engagement, personal transformation and leadership development. During the learning journey, participants engage with youth counterparts from diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds, diving deeply into the complex political, economic, environmental and social challenges that make up the modern sustainability crisis. As we hold this overarching inquiry, what we seek to achieve with these pilot programs is threefold:

• To demonstrate that there is essential learning that our young people need in order to transform the sustainability crisis that comes from communities that have been traditionally been marginalised (in this case, a south-north learning experience);
• To build a bridge of shared learning between highly resourced, mainstream institutions and periphery communities and organisations that helps to legitimise the learning and leadership offered from the fringes;
• To provide students and youth counterparts in partner communities with practical experience, training, and exposure to activities that strengthen the critical lens on a local-global solidarity and deepen their understanding of the interdependence of all life.

      Watching the pilot programs unfold over summer this year, I have been filled with a deep and resonant "Yes!", knowing that we are discovering something that goes even beyond what our initial objectives are. In our first pilot, we saw our UCI participants return home and go on to facilitate a hugely successful youth engagement process with young people from the drought-impacted largely immigrant community of Anza-Borrego. During our second trip, I watched as one of our participants took his learning in Guatemala around water access and equity to ignite his passion to take action around water issues with immigrant communities in the greater LA region. And as I write this, our third pilot - a Foodscapes Learning Journey that seeks to shift our understanding of food from a transactional to holistic relationship - is still unfolding. It is our desire that these programs build a foundation from which we can shift our education to include not just the knowledge, but the skills, values and attitudes that our young people need to lead the sustainability crisis. That it helps young people to bridge traditional boundaries with equity-oriented, compassionate action. That it helps to provide empowering opportunities for young people to lead the great transition. And who knows? Perhaps that transition may even lead us from the Information Age to the Wisdom Age.