Reflections on Community Building through the lens of a college student

 When really reflecting on what drives my interest in community development, I believe that it stems from wanting more accessible leisure programs to be available, especially in communities that need them. Growing up, while it was underfunded in comparison to other programs, I was in color guard and teamed up with the band to produce incredible shows during the fall while creating shows in the spring to bring the music to life. It was a big part of my life growing up and I believe that having that creative outlet allowed me to express myself and be a part of a community that even expanded to my hometown. For instance, we would be asked to perform in parades and local football games that deepened our bond with the community. 

(Pictures of performances I was in while I did color guard growing up)

To get back to the original point, having the ability to be a part of a leisure program helped grow my character and allowed me to be a part of the community that allowed myself to grow. So, what I’m heavily interested in with regards to community development is implementing and encouraging programs like this so the youth can have a positive outlet to turn to. One of the many reasons why I love working at Disney is that they also do what they can to promote the arts within communities. From personal experience, they not only did parades that showcased high school bands but they would have music based workshops where high school bands are invited to be a part of. Even to this day, while walking to my work location, I will see buses of high school bands coming into the resort to and either performing or being a part of these workshops. But Disney has also promoted the arts in other ways such as donating $1 million dollars to an organization known as Inner-City Arts back in 2014 (Walt Disney Company, 2014).  

In fact, if there’s an organization beyond Disney that I feel shares the same goals as I do, it would be Inner City Arts. The organization is located in Skid Row and provides art programs for students to be a part of. They work with children from kindergarten all the way to high school to provide programs that allow these individuals to have a creative outlet amidst a part of Los Angeles that has a community based on crime and drugs. The individuals who sign up for the program can choose from a variety of different art classes available such as film, music, animation, ceramics, etc and be taught by professionals in those fields. Studies have shown that the students who have participated in these courses have increases in not only creativity but also mathematics and English scores (Inner City Arts, n.d.). For me, being in an art based program helped me tremendously so my interest within community development is making more programs like this accessible to students. 

As for what role I would possibly take up as a community development practitioner, I could see myself taking up the advisory/challenge role. I’m an individual who tends to have strong feelings about certain topics and I would be the one to challenge these viewpoints to fit better what the community might need at the moment. Judgment is one of the VIA character strengths that was found in my report, which means that in any given situation, I look at all potential sides and make a conclusion after I have all of the facts. I want to make sure that everything is considered when making a decision and this usually means having multiple plans in case one option doesn’t work. In fact, another one of my character strengths is being fair, which reaffirms that I want everyone to be treated fairly and have access to the same things across the board. 

(My Top 5 VIA Character Strengths)

Overall, when looking at my top 5 character strengths, they are based on applying fair judgment to situations with the hope of wanting a better future. I know that my opinions and thoughts alone can’t do much to change the world but even if I can give a different perspective to something and that leads to positive changes, I think that’s incredible and a step in the right direction. 

Being the first born American child to immigrants, while I lived the majority of my life in the States, my parents still managed to raise me with Italian culture. Back in Italy, especially when speaking of the small towns, community is virtually everything. These communities definitely are homogenous in that, everyone has the same values, same way of thinking, and if someone steps out of line or is an outsider, then it’s considered the whole community’s business. However, this also created a sense of belonging between everyone and people are known to contribute to make the community stronger and better. When I lived in Sicily for 2 months, there was this strong sense of connectedness the town had and everyone would look out for each other, something that is completely different in my personal life. 

While there were many aspects of that type of lifestyle that I didn’t agree with, I do believe that these cultural values really were in the backbone of the volunteer efforts that my family and I did while I was growing up. Really looking at it, the volunteering that we did was based on wanting to help our community grow and be more connected with each other. A big volunteering memory I have is when my father would volunteer at our church during St. Joseph day to help with the dinner meal that they provided that day. My father would make well over 300 cannolis for the event with absolutely no compensation and then would be in the kitchen from the morning to night to help with the pasta dinner. He did everything out of the kindness of his heart because of the cultural values we have on wanting to help each other when possible. This mentality of being involved and helping whenever possible is something that has been stuck with me growing up and has been the backbone of why I volunteered and did certain programs. We might be loud and a bit too prideful but at the end of the day, the culture in Italian small towns is being connected and helping each other and that’s what we strive to do within our own community. 

(I couldn't find actual photos of my dad's cannolis since it was so long ago but they essentially looked like this. We didn't make the shells but for the cream, my dad mixed ricotta cheese, powdered sugar, a small bit of vanilla extract, chocolate chips and grated lemon/orange skin. At the time, he would fill the cannolis up with this cream and then complete it with candied cherries, though he has since stopped adding those and adds candied orange peels to finish it off. When he made them, they were always a hit at St. Joseph's table and something that everyone wants when they come visit my home.)

While I may have many thoughts and ideas on how to build programs that could benefit the community, the reality is that there’s a lot of learning that I have to do in order to be able to properly achieve these ideas. I may want to champion having more recreational programs available for individuals but I am also aware that it’s not as simple as doing it. With that being said, I want to make it a goal to gain some more knowledge and skills about how to build capacity within the community. Specifically, by the end of the course, I want to understand what community capacity is and what my community needs in order to grow. In general, by the end of the class, I would also like to look further into programs that either Inner City Arts or Disney provides that help build art programs and look into opportunities to be involved. For instance, I want to look into volunteer opportunities that Inner City Arts has so I can learn more about the mission and learn how these programs affect communities through experience. 

Sources

Inner-City Arts. (n.d.). Why we’re here.
https://inner-cityarts.org/why-were-here/

Sharpe, E., Mair, H., & Yuen, F. (2016). Community development: Applications for
leisure, sport, and tourism. State College, PA: Venture Publishing.

Walt Disney Company. (2014, November 10). Disney Grants $1 Million to Inner-City
Arts’ Creativity Lab.
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-grants-1-million-to-inner-city-arts-creativity-lab/

A Little Bit About Identity

 The social identity theory was created by Henri Tajfel that explained a person's sense of self is based on the group memberships that they were in. Whether we consciously think about it, there are aspects of us such as appearance, personality, history, etc, that shape who we are and we belong to those groups that become a part of our identity. This then further gets into the idea of in groups and out groups and how humans will categorize themselves into groups to identify with others and explain differences between others. Humans are social creatures by nature and identifying with groups brings a sense of belonging. 

For an assignment, I thought about the identities that I carry and how I feel about certain ones versus others that I am a part of. A social identity wheel was given and this is how I filled mine out: 

(For my chart, I decided to color chart what identities felt fit under the statements under the middle. I chose not to fill out the specifics in the chart as I didn't feel comfortable sharing those.)

Once I had a retrospection on what identities I felt really defined me, I was able to answer the questions that came with the questionnaire. Here are my responses: 

1) Think about a group or social category you belong to, and with which you identify. Describe what the group means to you, and list some examples that demonstrate your high level of identification.

For me, one of the biggest categories that I belong to and identify with is my ethnicity, which is being Italian. Both my parents come from Italy and they made sure that Italian culture was embedded into my life growing up. For instance, from when I was a baby, my parents would speak to me in Italian to the point where I would speak a mixture of both Italian and English. Food is a strong point in my house with my parents cooking fresh Italian food nightly and making sure that my sister and I know what authentic food looks like. No matter how many stories my parents have told, they always have something new to bring to the table with how life was like for them growing up and the differences they had in comparison to what the new generation over there has. To me, being Italian is really a big part of my identity because of the impact it has in my life today. Being Italian means belonging with others who share the same practices and having pride in the blood that flows through our veins. While I am a born American, it doesn’t change the fact that my view of the world has been shaped through values seen in the Italian culture (ie. high family connection, religious background, having traditions that we do for holidays, etc). 

(A picture I took when visiting Italy. We were having breakfast at the piazza and I had a cappuccino with my name drizzled on.)

2) Think about a group or social category you belong to (or appear to belong to), but with which you don't identify. Describe what the group means (or doesn't mean) to you, and list some examples that demonstrate your lack of identification.

A group that I am a part of but I do not identify with is my current socio-economic status. For me, socio-economic status has always been portrayed in my life as something that one earns and is not automatically granted to an individual. My father is an example of a man who came to America with only a few dollars in his pocket and a will to fulfill the American dream. While I understand that certain areas in my life are only accessible due to my family’s modest income, I have also been taught that whatever I had access to came from merit. And in a way after reflection, I don’t feel like my socio-economic status is something that I built up on my own. I’m only in the position that I am in because of my father’s efforts, not my own. Ergo, I don’t identify with my status because it’s not one that I created and I know that in the future, if I want to succeed and build on that further, it will be up to my own actions and efforts. 

3) Think about a group or social category you belong to, do not appear to belong to, with which you identify. Describe what the group means to you, and list some examples that demonstrate the difference between the sense of self and public perception.

A group that I don’t appear to belong to but is an incredible part of my identity are my psychiatric disabilities, which include depression, anxiety, panic disorder, and possibly ADHD. On the surface, one wouldn’t imagine that I suffer through these disorders, especially when they see me in certain settings. The one time my mask slipped at work and I had a panic attack, it felt surreal to have individuals essentially share the same sentiment of “You’re normally really happy and bubbly, we’ve never seen you like that before.” What the public doesn’t see is that these disorders never turn off and they trail with me through everything I do. The public sees an individual who comes to work on time and turns assignments in slightly prior but what they don’t see is the internal battle to motivate myself to do these things instead of laying and staring at a wall. The public may see me spend time with my friends and think that I am incredibly social given how animated I am in conversations but what they don’t know is that this is probably the first time I’ve been out in months because I keep getting distracted with my work and struggle with finishing it earlier so I can do fun things. Everything in my life has been made just a little bit harder with these disorders and while there are moments that I wish I could get a wand to magic them away, the way that they’ve impacted my life has contributed to my sense of identity. Of course, by no means am I defined by my disorders, but they are a part of me and they shape how I view the world. 

4) What kinds of factors influence level of identification with a group? What kinds of factors make a category or group membership irrelevant? 

There are a number of factors that can influence how someone identifies with a group and those factors can even change depending on what group an individual is in. Some reasons I may have to identify with a group may be different from others that I am a part of. For me personally, some factors that influence my identity with certain groups are based on my upbringing and the values that my parents instilled in me. They’re based on the need to belong to a group of individuals who believe in similar values as the ones I was raised with and they explain why I view the world the way I do. Personality is also another factor that can influence how much one identifies with a group as well. When I think of factors that make a membership in a group irrelevant, I do believe that there is a level of choice in that as well. Even if we may be part of a group, it is up to the person themselves to make that decision if they want that group to be a part of my identity. A personal example is that I'm very open and proud of my Italian background and put that as an identification factor towards myself. However, despite also being Italian, my sister chooses not to fully identify with that and would rather boast about being an American. Overall, I believe that it is the fluctuation of our personalities and values mixed with the teachings of the world that influence how much we identify with a group over another. 

And this is just scratching the surface on the identities that I have. There's the groups that I am in from personality, interests, work place, school, etc. that all shape who I am as an indiviudal and how my life has molded from being a part of these identities. And while there are some that I don't fully identify with, there are other identity groups that I am a part of that I am proud to be in and that all of them mixed together created the outlook I have on the world. Everyone is different but these identities help us connect in this vast world and fit into groups that share similar viewpoints. 

A Little About Me

Hello to those who have come across this blog of mine. My name is Elizabeth Piumetti, though I prefer to go by Liz, and I am a 25 year old female currently living in Los Angeles, California. In late 2018, I graduated from San Diego State University with an Industrial/Organizational Psychology Bachelor’s Degree and was accepted into the Disney College Program as a retail sales clerk in early 2019. Disney has always been a company that I wanted to work at so it felt like a dream when I got accepted and went in with the hopes of putting my foot in the door to expand within the company. However, the pandemic hit and many of those plans came to a halt as the world tried to find a way to navigate what would be our new normal. Unfortunately, I was caught in the lay off that they did and that is when I decided to go back to school, thus starting my journey through the ASU online program to get a Tourism and Recreational Degree. At this current moment, I did get rehired at Disney within the same position (though I am in the process of trying to switch departments to go into guest services) and I hopefully will be graduating this upcoming spring. Once I switch departments, the hope is to eventually move up the ladder and ultimately become a manager where I can supervise staff in the hospitality industry and empower them to give guests the best experience possible. My life definitely isn’t where I planned it to be but I have learned and grown and I’m looking forward to seeing where the future takes me next. 

Regardless of whatever path I end up taking, I know that I want to have a career in hospitality and tourism management, specifically in either a hotel, theme park, or even an airport. Before settling into management degrees, I actually wanted to go into the entertainment industry because I genuinely enjoy seeing people happy. I like making people happy. Whether it’s through writing a story or bending the rules a bit and giving a discount, knowing that I added a small spark of happiness to someone’s day is something that keeps me going. Coupled with the fact that I’ve grown to be more passionate about the psychology of employees, it really solidified the fact that I want to be in this industry and have the best of both worlds. 

When I’m not focused on school and work, I enjoy doing creative things like writing and drawing. I also love to read and watch a variety of different media that fluctuate depending on my mood. Sometimes I’ll be in the mood for a sweet Disney movie that discusses the beauty of family and other times I’m interested in a show that brings up morally gray situations that makes one think after moments of profound silence. In essence, I love hearing a great story just as much as I love telling a good story. 

To close out, I’m excited to share my intellectual journey with everyone and I look forward to any growth that will come from starting this blog.