Grace LaTourelle-
Childhood Poverty: Uniting Voices to Empower Tomorrow is the theme for this year’s Building Bridges Conference, taking place at 9:00 a.m. this Saturday, March 2nd, in Alumni Hall.
This year marks the 29th Building Bridges Conference at Gustavus. Hosted by the Building Bridges student organization, the conference has revolved around a variety of topics regarding social justice. Past conferences have explored topics such as the refugee crisis, educational inequities, and mass incarceration. The Building Bridges student organization illuminates education on diversity, inclusion, and social justice within the school and community, as well as focuses on topics and ideas that are not often discussed publicly.
Originally started in 1996 as a collaboration between student groups across several colleges, the Building Bridges Conference has now become a student-led initiative within the Gustavus community. The BB Committee is divided into sub-committees to plan social events, plan the conference, and create the interactive experience.
The topic of childhood poverty was chosen for this year’s conference. The speakers and experiences will illustrate the realities of childhood poverty and work to break down misconceptions.
“This impacts both the Gustavus community and our broader community, as there are a lot of us in the community who have experienced childhood poverty and may still be experiencing the effects of it in their daily lives today,” Secretary of the Executive Board and Senior Olivia Falk said.
One in nine children in Minnesota and one in seven children in the United States as a whole are living in poverty. This equates to around three students per classroom in Minnesota and four to five students per classroom in the United States who are impoverished.
“As a committee, we want to advocate for current and future generations of children, whose experiences of poverty and suffering can so easily fall through the cracks,” Co-Chair and Senior Ainsley Langerud said. “By and large, the child poverty issue is not as visible within the Midwest as it is on either the East or West coasts.”
The event will begin with opening remarks and then keynote speeches. The speakers for this conference will be Dr. Tonya Lippert and Mx. Mel Moore. Each will discuss houseless LGBTQ+ youth and housing insecurity.
Around 1:45 p.m., the event will move to Beck Hall where there will be workshops and an immersive and interactive Action Piece walkthrough, designed by students. The workshops will be led by speakers Dr. Tina Rice and Ms. Laura Zender, discussing the psychological effects that poverty has on youth, including brain development and the implications of hunger at school.
Action Piece takes place on the second floor of Beck Hall, with different rooms showcasing a variety of themes regarding childhood poverty. These may include mental health or the importance of extracurricular clubs, however, the committee is given creative freedom to design something that they are passionate about.
“But otherwise, Action Piece is something that you have to experience yourself the day of the conference,” Co-chair and Junior Alex Dillon said.
The week leading up to Saturday has been filled with events in collaboration with other student organizations on campus, such as Students for Reproductive Freedom, Student Educators Association, and Queers & Allies. At 3:00 p.m. on the day of this issue’s publication, Friday, March 1st, there will be a Build-Your-Own-Trail Mix event occurring on the lower level of the Campus Center.
“…Events are just a fun way to be able to promote the conference and Building Bridges. We like to collaborate with other student organizations to broaden our reach, someone who is in [Students for Reproductive Freedom] might not know about Building Bridges but they would learn about it by coming to our event,” Falk said.
Dillon also noted that ‘BB Week’ is not only to raise awareness on campus but is also a celebration of the hard work the Building Bridges committee put into the planning of the conference.
“…BB week is just a matter of experiencing what they created and put so much work and effort into,” Dillon said.
Free tickets are available on the Gustavus Website and are requested so that the committee can know how many attendees can be anticipated. There will also be separate tickets, 15 dollars each, available for purchase to attend the luncheon.
“I think I speak for the whole committee when I say that we are really excited for everyone to see the conference we have been working on all year!” Falk said.
The Building Bridges board encourages all students to attend the conference, workshops, or the interactive experience, to incorporate the wider community into these discussions. The committee hopes that students are able to reflect, gain understanding, break down preconceived notions, and acquire a new sense of empathy. The Conference is ultimately acknowledged as a space to meaningfully discuss issues that impact the Gustavus and broader community.
“We want people to understand that being impoverished is more than having less than a certain amount of money and how the effects of childhood poverty affect a person for the rest of their life, physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” Dillon said.