By Marta Tahja-Syrett.
Ellen Shortt Sanchez is devoted to collaboration and advocacy. In her professional life, Shortt Sanchez attends to the partnership and academic needs of The Evergreen State College. As the director of Evergreen’s Center for Community-Based Learning and Action (CCBLA), she finds herself merging the divide between community involvement and higher-education. Shortt Sanchez also demonstrates her strengths and leadership abilities within her role at Shelton-based activist group, Elevate Mason County.
In 2006, Shortt Sanchez began working for the CCBLA. Her efforts have resulted in strong ties between campus life and local communities and organizations. In addition, her work is centered on the idea that education should be both accessible and service-oriented.
“We really want to work and emphasize the community partnership piece of the work that happens in the center. We are a public service center, which is another important piece of Evergreen’s commitment to serving the community, and to making sure higher-ed is accessible beyond just tuition-paying students,” said Shortt Sanchez. “We’re academics, so that’s another piece that really has so much excitement and promise.”
“I would say mostly we work with academic programs and faculty who are already engaging in, a lot of times, programs that work with Literacy and Education for Adults with Disabilities, or Gateways for Incarcerated Youth, or Spanish-Speaking World,” said Shortt Sanchez.
Shortt Sanchez believes that the Gateways for Incarcerated Youth program works to bring higher education to youth behind bars. According to Evergreen’s website, the Gateways program provides students with the opportunity to work as mentors for youth incarcerated at juvenile correctional facilities. Faculty members also lead seminars which incarcerated youth can attend and earn credit for—free of charge. Since Gateways’ 1996 commencement, “over 1,000 incarcerated youth have made academic gains in attendance, grade-level promotion, and unlocked their potential for change.” Shortt Sanchez sees the accomplishments achieved by this program as being an important aspect of the CCBLA’s contribution to the greater community.
Evergreen’s on-campus food bank, a collaborative effort with the Thurston County Food Bank, is one program that the CCBLA helped to implement. Shortt Sanchez stated that the center also offers “a community-service work-study model, which is working with a team of 15 to 20 organizations that students can use their work-study award to be able to work [with].” This allows for students to negate debt while doing meaningful work at a local level.
Many of Olympia’s organizations have been developed by Evergreen graduates, and current students still have an integral role in terms of decision-making and volunteership. “I think that Evergreen really is a resource for the community and that we should kind of be looking outward and keep thinking about ways that we can keep resources going towards the community,” said Shortt Sanchez.
The CCBLA is dedicated to other obligations, as well, such as Community to Community Day. During Community to Community Day, new students fulfill their orientation duties by working alongside local organizations. In addition, the CCBLA annually facilitates Farm Worker Justice Day, “which aims to build awareness and support for the efforts of farmworkers to gain safe and just working conditions in the United States” (according to Evergreen’s website).
Shortt Sanchez believes that the CCBLA’s fostering of community-based learning helps students to determine where they want to go in life. Oftentimes, such hands-on approaches to learning can lead a student towards, or even away from, a specific career choice.
In Shortt Sanchez’s opinion, it is just as important to figure out what you’re not interested in doing as what “lights the fire” and captivates one’s attentions. “I think really trying things out is a way that you can figure out ‘Is this for me? Is this not for me?’”
In a community-based setting, Shortt Sanchez said “there’s kinds of ways to see visions, and see how we can keep working towards them.” The key objective is to work collaboratively with mentors. Mentorship helps solidify actions needed for change and growth—both on a personal and community level. Students and mentors can start conversations along the lines of “I really want to get there, and hopefully, we can get there together.”
“Our center is all about helping people engage in the community, and I in my own life practice that, as well, and have volunteer commitments outside of my work life,” said Shortt Sanchez. “Elevate Mason County is really close to my heart. It started in 2016, after the election, and really was a time when we were hearing news reports about Mason County.”
Shortt Sanchez said that these news reports categorized the majority of people’s opinions, something that she felt undermined the differing beliefs, and values, of Mason County.
During this time, members of Mason County found themselves thinking “‘this doesn’t sound like it represents our community.’” Through the birth of Elevate Mason County, Shortt Sanchez wanted to demonstrate that this was in fact true, that Mason County’s ideological core is actually diverse in nature.
Shortt Sanchez sees the long-term mission of Elevate Mason County as being centered around immigrant rights. By taking “direction from leadership of color, and from community organizations like CIELO Shelton,” Elevate Mason County can mobilize community members and support the needs of Mason County’s immigrant community. Elevate Mason County specifically looks at the dangers of immigration enforcement, such as forced family separation.
Shortt Sanchez feels that community discourse is important in regard to truly understanding viewpoints external to oneself. Through the process of listening, differing routes towards equity and working together can be articulated. Shortt Sanchez believes that neighbors with varying opinions need to speak to one another, because “if we don’t have those conversations, we can’t move the needle.”
Working alongside Elevate Mason County, CIELO of Shelton and Mason County Climate Justice helped to sponsor Workers and Neighbors Solidarity Feast, in honor of this year’s May Day. According to their website, Elevate Mason County suggested that individuals bring “signs of solidarity and support for Workers Rights, Immigrant Rights and Human Rights.” After sign-wavers occupied a space along Shelton’s 1st Ave, the group gathered for a potluck.
Elevate Mason County has also hosted guest speakers, such as Zoltan Grossman—a professor at The Evergreen State College who published Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands, in 2017. According to Elevate Mason County’s website, Grossman “spoke on building diverse alliances to achieve racial justice within communities.” Shortt Sanchez, referencing the sentiment present within Grossman’s work, stated: “that example of how communities have come together to fight hate—we think we can do that, too.”
