Community Care and Changemaking
“Not sure if you know about this, but our daughter has been leading a group of other second-grade girls in making signs in support of the women of Iran,” began Hillbrook parents Ro and Mattia’s email to Annie Makela, Director of the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship. “This is totally organic between the girls, which I think is amazing.” Attached to the email are photos of the signs – pages filled with positive messages and demands for justice and equal written in colorful marker, alongside drawings of hearts and rainbows and a repeating phrase:
Azadi.
Freedom.
“At night my mom and I like to talk about what is happening in Iran. It isn’t fair that girls are being treated so differently and having to fight so hard,” Azadeh said. “Did you know my name means freedom? Some of the people fighting in Iran say my name in their chants because they are fighting for freedom.”
In October of 2022, the protests and resulting brutality in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini were deeply troubling to communities around the world; many encountered an unspoken question that often arrives alongside stories of injustice: what do you do – how do you help – when the problem feels bigger than you? How do you support a fight for justice from the other side of the world?
If you’re a second-grader at Hillbrook, you gather your friends and your best markers to make signs in support of girls and women in Iran.
If you’re that second-grader’s teacher, you reach out to the parent community to help host a clothing drive to send to refugees who have landed nearby.
If you’re that second-grader’s mother and father and grandmother, you say “yes” to the opportunity to co-host a civic dinner, an intentionally intimate gathering where every person at the table is invited to share a story, idea, or experience. For this particular dinner, the majority of folks around the table are of Persian identity, many of whom lived much of their lives in Iran. The evening is shaped by a deeply personal question: what does the fight for justice in Iran mean to you? Ideas form through two encouraging words: what if.
What if we teach children and our community here in California how critical it is to fight and protect our freedom?
What if all students around the world had access to a school like Hillbrook?
What if the words “woman, freedom, life” were displayed proudly in all classrooms around the world and we understood that the fight for justice in Iran is not all that far from the fight for justice everywhere?
What if the freedom I feel tonight could be felt by girls and women in Iran?
What if our children feel the same sense of community we feel tonight?
The Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship’s work focuses on those moments that start with a marker – our inner changemaker’s need to do something to disrupt the feeling of helplessness in the wake of injustice. The work is both that of allyship and co-conspirator. Through the Scott Center’s work, “changemaker” is a well-known word at Hillbrook – both a compliment and an invitation, a call to action and recognition, changemakers find opportunities and inspiration both from and for the collective good of a community. They are willing to do what is tough and what is right, even when others struggle to see a path forward. The fight for justice is rooted in community care – the ways in which individual and collective agency help us build a more connected world. Empowering young people’s voices – providing meaningful space for ideas to form – is a cornerstone of the Scott Center’s work with students at Hillbrook. Ideas become action when they have the space to take shape, to build, and gather enough momentum to draw others in.
The other side of the world is never as far away as it feels. In communities, around dinner tables, in classrooms, you’ll find joy, sorrow, outrage, despair, the desire for things to be better than they are. The fight for azadi – for freedom – makes neighbors of us all.
When the problem feels bigger than you, do what Azadeh did. Gather friends; start with a marker. You never know how far your message will go.
Shared suggested reading/listening/learning from the Hillbrook Persian community who attended the Civic Dinner: