About the Social Justice Partnership Program
Program Description
The SJPP is an innovative program conceptualized and run primarily by Bryn Mawr students with the support of faculty, staff, and administrators. Its function is to create safe spaces, resources, and programming within and through which students coming from different backgrounds and life experiences can explore what issues of diversity mean to them and how those issues affect their lives. In keeping with the mission of Bryn Mawr College, the Social Justice Pilot Program "seeks to sustain a community diverse in nature and democratic in practice, for we believe that only through considering many perspectives do we gain a deeper understanding of each other and the world."
Cohorts of faculty or staff and student participants meet regularly throughout the year to construct and pursue their "social justice journeys." The SJPP has created a set of guidelines--- a support structure that provides resources and programming --- for participants to draw on to facilitate personal and community explorations. The goal of this set of guidelines is to allow a converging of the personal and academic realms of students' lives while also providing space for the acquiring and honing of leadership skills within and across cohorts. By fostering this type of environment for as many students as possible, we hope to support community members in holding and voicing their opinions and beliefs within the institution of Bryn Mawr while also learning about and confronting the institutionalized structures, practices, and policies which speak to each individual's definition of social justice (on campus and in the global community) or a lack thereof.
Our goal is to foster genuine communication between groups on campus --- communication that is informed by multiple versions of history and that accounts for the points of weakness and of growth for all groups involved. With this sharing of ideas and experience and celebration of each other's successes on a challenging and continuous basis, we envision an increased capacity for compassion between and among all community members.