This document outlines a community action plan to create an online community for former Jesuit volunteers. It proposes building a website to facilitate participation, dialogue, and togetherness among volunteers who have moved to different places after their service. The plan details how to clarify goals, identify stakeholders, assess interest and demand, and adjust plans based on experience to strengthen the social organization and increase participation over time. The initiator hopes this virtual community can help address feelings of isolation from severed ties to former in-person communities and benefit those who contribute by allowing them to share stories and reconnect. The impacts are unclear but could include psychological benefits from new social bonds and connections.

1. Community Action
Plan
Mateo Pimentel

2. The community
All Former Jesuit Volunteers

3. The setting Online
Possibly in-person, too!

4. The situation, at present
First, volunteers move
Some to distant continents;
others, the next town over...
Then they work
Different volunteers live in and
work in foreign environments
Next, volunteers reflect
Volunteers consider the the
significance of their experience
through critical reflection
Volunteers return home
Now, the community is
splintered and inchoate,
separated by vast distances

5. So what's
wrong?
At present there is no all-
encompassing, ongoing
communication or
commitment to living in
virtual ‘community’ with each
other

6. The nature of
this CAP?

7. To reestablish
community.
We want to create virtual
community with one another
So we will build a Web site to
facilitate community
How? Through participation
dialogue, and online togetherness

8. Details
We begin with a “needs-based approach”
- Community is participatory
- Benefits of participation should outweigh the costs, if any
In order to manage emotional resources and experience capital (heuristic/tacit knowledge) we
will…
1. Clarify and prioritize objects and link them to outputs
2. Identify stakeholders and provide space to self-assess capacity and interests
3. Assess demand without assuming demand
4. Establish eligibility criteria for community groups
5. Learn by doing and adjust plans according to experience
6. Invest in and strengthen social organization (to increase participation)

9. How am I
connected?
I’m an FJV, too!
As a returned worker and former
Jesuit Volunteer myself, I hope to
benefit from participating in this
virtual or online community
I hope it is of some utility to others
who might also benefit from having
access to a virtual community in
which they could participate

10. The change
process

11. How do the stakeholders get involved?
Like every community, ours lays claim to a unique set, or combination, of assets
that will be fundamental to the building of our future.
We can begin mapping our resources by taking inventory of our gifts, skills, and
capacities.
So collectively - and via one central, common Web site - we can manifest these and
consider and deliberate them together!
This should excite all who participate and encourage further collaboration and
participation.

12. Who are we?
We are Former Jesuit Volunteers
(FJVs) who desire to construct an
exploratory, ongoing, and online
community with one another.

13. Why do we
want change?
Who will take
the initiative?

14. We want change because we have all severed
ties from our former, in-person communities,
and this severance is at times desolate

15. I, Mateo Pimentel, have taken the initiative to
create a Website. But it will take all of us who
participate in order to make a change

16. Who will
resist?
There are many...
It is possible that no FJVs will
participate. It is also possible that
numerous will. But for those who do
not contribute or make their online
presence shift from spectator to
participant, it is likely that they
harbor an attitude that has been
shaped by their experience (or by
their current life now) such that they
do not want to invest the time
necessary to belong.

17. There is no need
for conflict.

18. Power, authority, and advancing the
CAPIn another kind of community action plan, it is understandable that power,
leadership and conflict will find a space to inhabit.
This online, Web-based, and virtual community of FJVs only supposes that no
authority is necessary in order for it to bear fruit.
Feedback from the community members should, of course, influence the design
and arrangement of the Web site and its content; but decisions of such a nature
should be deliberated entirely democratically.
At present there are no foreseeable concerns that are so sensitive as to warrant a
kind of centralized authority to address them.

19. What are the
impacts?
Who is
responsible?

20. There is no way of knowing just yet.
Possible impacts include the psychological
benefits that come with the sharing of stories
with others and establishing connections and
social bonds that did not before exist. Other than
this, though, it is hard to say!
For the time being, I assume responsibility of the
engagement of the budding community in this
CAP. After the participation of the community
members nullifies my function, I will cease to
bear any responsibility and only continue to
contribute myself.

21. Lessons learned...
Working intentionally with another classmate on the “Real Utopias” portion of this
course has made me realize that mutual interest, drive, desire for community, and
participation are key elements for something organic to take root and thrive.
As opposed to a learning environment, or assignment, based on the isolating
strictures of individualism and cost-benefit analysis, our free-range, participatory
exploration of social entrepreneurialism brought rewarding, if not, unexpected,
outcomes.
These outcomes were the fruit of something collaborative and participatory and
made the invested time and effort well worth it.
I can only hope that the same will be said of my CAP -- that is, if it comes to life...