I met with two groups this week- Service Leaders at the first HIA/PSC Service Leader Dinner and a group of concerned students at The Forum’s MIT+150: Dysfunctional Wisdom event. Both were incredibly enlightening and showed me the students and voices that I should try and tap into.

I stepped into the Service Leaders Dinner with a new set of goggles, those that I am starting to construct with the ideas of co-design. Ajoke and Srav, members of HIA organized the event with the guidance of Sally, the Director of the Public Service Center (PSC) over IAP. I am really excited to say that some really great things resulted.

We had a really strong crowd. Along with PSC Director Sally and the head of the Student Activities Office (SAO), Leah Flynn, there were about 14 people in attendance, the directors of Amphibious Achievement, the heads of MIT’s Global Poverty Initiative, the founders of MIT’s Relay for Life, the heads of China Care and a couple of solo players like a project leader from the International Development Club and one of the new heads of InnoWorks. Even though it was our first dinner I think that everyone took something away. The admins were able to get more feedback about what MIT students know about the resources that are available to us and the undergrads representing these organizations reported that they enjoyed sharing their experiences and got something out of sharing their battles in forming and/or maintaining their organizations.

There were a lot of small things that the SAO and PSC  were advised to pursue like creating videos instead of holding workshops on topics like leadership and using MIT resources along with some more structural knowledge such as the fact that SAPWeb a common learning hump for MIT treasurers cannot be revamped.

After attending the Forum and the Service Leaders Dinner I would like to design closely with two parties. First and most relevant to HIA’s current vision, the Student Service Leaders: there are some well defined and high impact needs that they present. The other group is the group of students that people that showed up to the Forum’s event. Right now my motivation is character.

Both the Dysfunction discussed at the Forum Event and the inadequacies outlined at the Dinner can be talked about from that frame of reference.