With a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Legacy Campaign, the students carried out an intergenerational project to produce a permanent piece of art at the Baker Community Center, home of the Jane Addams School. The students teamed up with youth from the Youth Farm and Market Project and hosted monthly community dinners showcasing traditional foods from cultural groups. The teens cooked the foods with elders from the Hmong, East African, and Latino communities. At these dinners, where roughly 150 community members enjoyed a meal together, the Jane Addams School teens conducted their interviews. The students asked how the elders had made St. Paul their home and what traditions they had kept alive from their home countries.

The teens had expected each culture to be very different from the others, but they were surprised to discover how much each group had in common especially with regard to values. The students learned that no matter where they were born, the elders valued family, tradition, community, hard work, honesty, and cooking and sharing food.

The community members’ similarities became the focal point of the students’ work. The students wanted the neighborhood to see that by getting to know one another, people would find out that they had more in common with each other than they thought, and they wanted this to be conveyed in the art piece.

The students commissioned Chaka Mkali and Andres Guzman to create a 40-foot mural on a wall that faces Baker’s playground. The mural, shown here, can be seen from blocks away and had been a hot spot for graffiti in the past. The mural was completed in two months and is now a beautiful addition to the growing Baker Center.

The teens proudly represented the West Side and their project at this year’s PeaceJam in Minneapolis where they presented their project to Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Oscar Arias Sanchez.

The mural is a “Sharing Community Stories’ partnership between the Jane Addams School for Democracy, the Youth Farm and Market Project, and the Minnesota Historical Society.

The Baker Community Center is a vibrant cultural learning center on St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood. Augsburg students Mallory Carstens and Lexi Stadstad have worked at Baker and the Jane Addams School through the Bonner Leaders program.

Adapted from a story by Caritza Mariani

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Augsburg’s “CDC” is the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, a former affiliate of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. The Center moved to Augsburg last July when the partnership was approved the Board of Regents.

The Center for Democracy and Citizenship has two locations: one in the Baker Community Center on St. Paul’s West Side, and the other in the ADC Business Center on the corner of Riverside and 20th Avenues. The Center will host an open house on Thursday, Oct. 29 from 2-5 p.m. at their Riverside offices.

The Center for Democracy and Citizenship focuses its work on building and sustaining democracy through community-based civic engagement initiatives including:

– Public Achievement is a youth civic organizing model that engages young people in public problem solving.

– The Jane Addams School for Democracy brings immigrant families, college students, and other community members together to do public work and learning on St. Paul’s West Side.

– The Warrior to Citizen Campaign challenges Minnesotans at the community level to support returning veterans and find ways to tap the new skills and experience they have to offer as citizens.

Harry Boyte, co-director of the Center, says they were impressed by Augsburg’s inclusive, welcoming approach to students from different backgrounds. “Augsburg deeply values the democratic values of diversity and community engagement,” Boyte says. “The dominant trends in higher education are in the other direction, but diversity in education and public life will help us produce the best citizen leaders.”

The Center’s current focus is on education and reform of the educational system. “We want to help expand the definition of student success so that it’s not based on standardized tests and grades alone,” Tveit says. Several of the Center’s staff are also working on a Bush Foundation committee on teacher education with Gretchen Irvine, assistant professor of education at Augsburg.

Next week the Center for Democracy and Citizenship will be involved in two important events in which the Augsburg community is invited to participate. With the Citizens League, Minnesota Campus Compact, and the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration, the Center will sponsor a discussion on civic engagement and the Minnesota Civic Health Index. “The Next Minnesota Miracle: Building a Living Democracy for the 21st Century” will be held Monday, November 2 at 4 p.m. at Markim Hall on the Macalester College campus.

On Tuesday, Nov. 3, Boyte is moderating a webinar on how civic agency can be an organizing theme for the future of higher education. “Agents and Architects of Democracy: The Struggle for the Future of Higher Education” will take place from 2-3 p.m.

Find more information about both of these events on the Center for Democracy and Citizenship website.

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