Conversing With Community

Sofia Tascon

To “do good” in a community means to perform actions or exhibit an attitude with the intentions to leave a community better than you found it. “Better” is a subjective term, however, this provides multiple different opportunities for positive change to be conducted. From recycling a bottle cap you find on the street, to organizing a community food drive, doing good varies based on what’s important to you and the area. It can also look like conducting research through Global Scholars, which provides the wonderful chance to give a voice to members of the different city, town, or even country you’re residing. Every scholar needs to record interviews to include in their final project, which means bringing an issue or idea all the way back to our state capitol of Tallahassee, Florida. When we present our findings, this is a service that should be done to honor everyone we met during our summer experience. While I’ve conducted interviews of different individuals in Valencia, Spain, my understanding of how Spain’s government and citizen duties work has significantly increased. Not only have I jotted down people’s opinions, but I’m happy to say the interviews have felt more like lengthy conversations where we really explore the details behind different issues, like how their taxpayer dollars are used. 

My understanding of community engagement has deepened through the lesson that these individuals are not just names to go on a research poster, but real people that I can learn a lot from and enjoy an intellectual conversation with. Even outside the people I interview, I’ve spoken to locals from all over the world that I have swapped stories with, which has really allowed me to immerse myself into whichever country I visited this past summer. For instance, at one of my favorite coffee shops to attend in Spain, I have spoken to one of the baristas multiple times regarding her Irish culture. I have thoroughly enjoyed our interactions. In my community based interest of politics and government, I believe the next questions that should be answered are in the parliamentary branch of Spain’s parliamentary monarchy government. My research has focused solely on the monarchy, thus, if this project were to be expanded upon it would include details of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain. As the head of government, he plays an extremely significant role for the country, meaning a wide range of citizen opinion on him as well would be interesting to collect.