At the time, I appreciated it as a small, family-style school. It did not have what we now consider diversity, but there were people there from different cultures. We were not all the same. Personalities were vivid. The teachers, while learned, did not just recite their knowledge, but encouraged dialogue
and expanded our minds. They and the headmistresses set an example of dedication—of non-material motivation and commitment—to their fields and to the School. With people  like Ms. Woodworth, Shipley gave us new ways into the world, through trips to the United Nations, work stints in the inner city, showing us a way to go beyond the limits of the world into which we had been born.

The non-profit organization I work with, Rural Development Leadership Network, has some of the same qualities. It is a family-style network, made up of vivid personalities from different cultures, who learn ways to go beyond the worlds into which they were born. 

RDLN's mission is to help poor rural communities to strengthen themselves. We invest in a community's most important resource—its people. We ask what people want to make happen and help them gather the resources to do it. These are their field projects. Through related independent study and participation in our Rural Development Institute at the University of California, they can earn non-campus-based academic degrees that reinforce their commitment to their communities and strengthen the contribution they make.

Since this is a high school reunion, let’s look at the experience of a few of the people in our program during their high school years.

One RDLN Leader, growing up on a farm before the days of the civil rights movement, had been determined to leave behind the racism of the South as soon as she graduated from high school. However, during her senior year, her father was killed by a white man, who was never brought to justice. Because of that event, she made a resolution that she would stay in the South and make her community a better place. She would work for justice. 

Having labored in her husband’s shadow for many years, she did not consider herself a leader until she joined our program, found the “leader” label attached to her, and chose to accept it. She still uses the Master’s thesis she wrote in our program as the blueprint for her work with small farmers. Her work became the model for the Minority Outreach and Technical Assistance provisions of recent farm bills.

She has helped farmers organize into cooperatives and add value to their crops by acquiring a processing plant for pecans, for example, and by making a sauce from peppers. She now works with women in numerous counties in her state. She is helping the people in the county where she grew up to turn their old school building into a community center with plans for a commercial kitchen and a range of programs operating there.

Many people we work with have been made to feel inadequate in terms of  education. Our program is about creating role models and building confidence.

One person, who later graduated from law school and became editor-in-chief of the only Indian law review in the country, said at an RDLN Network gathering, “I am standing before you today as the most unlikely candidate to have even graduated from high school. As I go out into the communities and talk with young people, I tell them—and they can look at me and see it is true—that if you want something bad enough in your life, you can do it. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re not smart; for a long time I didn't think that I had any intelligence or capacity for learning at all.”

Because of similar feelings, an RDLN leader from the South did not apply to college. Many people from her area flunked out when they enrolled, and
she did not want her parents, with six other children, to waste their limited funds. She asked a teacher if her parents might be able to get their money back if she failed, but was told no. Furthermore, no encouragement was offered: “The teacher didn't tell me that all I had to do was ‘Go ahead and try and you can make it.’”

Another RDLN participant was unable to attend high school at all. She had worked in the fields with her migrant family since the age of eight,
going to a different school every few months—in Idaho, in Texas, in Mexico—always out of step with the curriculum, often out of step with the language. When she reached high school age, her parents, following cultural priorities, required her to stay home and take care of the younger children while her brothers were allowed to go to school. 

As an adult on her own, she persevered through the G.E.D., the Associate's degree, and the Bachelor's degree, with plans to earn her Master's through RDLN. Her statement, during graduation from RDLN’s four-week Rural Development Institute early in those years was that she was persevering as an example to her young son. At RDLN, she found, for the first time, support in an educational setting, from her classmates and from the program.

She is now the director of a  widely recognized statewide organization for farmworker women, helping break economic barriers and cultural patterns like the ones that held her back. With each other’s support, the farmworker women in her organization deal with formerly “shameful” realities like domestic violence and HIV-AIDs, and learn to challenge illegal and abusive employment situations, including misuse of pesticides and lack of pay. They prepare for non-farmwork employment, and they even train employees of the criminal justice system in issues pertinent to farmworkers. This leader recently received one of nineteen Leadership for a Changing World awards given by the Ford Foundation, with a check for $100,000 to support her organization’s work. RDLN nominated her for the award.

RDLN presents its participants, not with money, but with a challenge: a challenge to develop themselves and their communities at the same time.

I was nominated for the Distinguished Alumna award, not because I am a "distinguished" person, but because of the important work the people I work with do and because our organization helps them do it. I hope that, after sending your checks to Shipley, you will make out a check to help rural communities where vital work is underway.