How can we work towards a better society in difficult times? The CHASIcast is pleased to welcome back Dr. Rita Dhungel, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and Human Services, joined this time by Chelsea Klassen, CHASI’s lead researcher and a sessional instructor in the School of Social Justice and Global Stewardship.
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Transcript
CHASIcast voice-over 00:03
Coming up on the CHASIcast:
Rita Dhungel 00:06
Community development is all change. We want to change society. We want to promote social, mental, emotional, wellbeing of the communities. And this is the way we can do that.
CHASIcast voice-over 00:23
From UFV’s Community Health and Social Innovation Hub, this is the CHASIcast. A program dedicated to bringing experts and insights to the issues that shape our lives, because words have to matter. Now, here’s your host, CHASI director, Dr. Martha Dow.
Martha Dow 00:43
So it’s my privilege today to welcome two guests. I don’t know if we can call you a guest Chelsea or not, but Dr. Rita Dhungel is here, and also Chelsea Klassen here from CHASI. So today I just am really excited for us to talk about, in these times particularly, why the work that both of you do in your classrooms, in your research with respect to global development is just so important. So I wonder if we could start, Rita, maybe you could introduce yourself in terms of the work you do around sort of global development and in your area, and then Chelsea the same.
Rita Dhungel 01:23
Thank you for the invite, Dr Martha and Namaste, everyone. This is Rita Dhungel with the School of Social Work and Human Services, and I’m really pleased to be here today and glad to share some of my work, what I do, how I do, and why I do.
Rita Dhungel 01:43
Mostly, I have been teaching community development course and research at UFV, and I feel like it’s my privilege to teach research and community development class, because I always say, without building community development, we cannot do research. It’s incomplete. We get the information. We get the data, we analyze the data, we get the publication. But at the end of the day, I always ask my questions like, so what?
Rita Dhungel 02:18
So I think this is really important to teach our upcoming students or upcoming researchers that engaging with communities is so important, and building [relationships], and not to be in [a] rush when you are doing research.
Martha Dow 02:38
So thanks for that, Rita. That’s a great start to what we’re talking about. And Chelsea, I wonder if you could just introduce yourself.
Chelsea Klassen 02:44
Yeah, so my name is Chelsea Klassen, and I’m the lead researcher at CHASI. Another role that I play at the university is I’m a sessional faculty in the Global Development Studies program. So I love teaching introduction to Global Development Studies, because we get to talk about such a wide breadth of different topics. I’m also teaching Gender and Development, and Refugees and Development, and on occasion, I teach a special topics class on Afghanistan, because that’s where I’ve done my master’s research, and continue to support Afghan activists as they fight for gender equality amidst the Taliban rule.
Martha Dow 03:26
And we’ve really appreciated in CHASI, your work in that area and how it educates all of us. I wonder, and I’m really excited to the two of you to have this conversation, and I’m fortunate enough to get to listen to it. But Chelsea, can you talk a little bit about why in 2025 that your work feels even more urgent, more relevant.
Chelsea Klassen 03:45
Yeah, so it’s wonderful to hear Rita talk about teaching social work and community development. When I did my undergrad at UFV in global development studies, I actually took that class. It had a different instructor, but I took that class and the wonderful intersection of, I had learned so much about theory of global development, I learned about different components, but seeing how valuable community development is to really achieve those development goals, and how that’s such an integral part of these huge goals that we have, multilateral institutions set, was really eye opening.
Chelsea Klassen 04:28
And I got to see both international perspective when I took that class, and then also a local perspective. And I think having those two perspectives is really important, and that’s what takes me, Martha, back to your question of why is it really important to have that global perspective?
Chelsea Klassen 04:47
I think, for so many reasons. I think the importance of talking about these issues allows us to more clearly see the systems of inequality that we’re all a part of in some way. It’s really important to talk about those systems of oppression, because with social media now, they’re able to have these portals to see different things going on. So we’ll hear students talking about fast fashion, or talking about issues of a natural disaster, or talking about rights for women around the world, and so they already know, sometimes, some of the things that are going on globally. But what we’re able to really talk about in these courses is how those systems of inequality have been perpetuated through over 1000s of years and maybe hundreds of years. And really look at how that can help explain some of the situations we’re in right now.
Chelsea Klassen 05:54
So I think right now, helping students understand what’s going on in some way, or giving them just some little piece, of course, I can’t explain any situation really wholly, but giving them a little piece. In my introduction class, we talk about Rostow’s model of development from the 1960s and that model looks at what was prescribed as the way to development. And it starts with going from a traditional society, as Rostow puts it, up, to high mass consumption was the goal, right? And so I talked to students, and I say a lot of the problems we have today is because of these ideas that we had. And we’ve had over different years, but in the 60s, this idea was we need to reach high mass consumption. So really, we’ve achieved that. But a lot of the issues, human rights abuses, labor rights, environmental concerns, all of these things are because we’ve had these ideas. So it’s really important to understand how we got here. And then also to think about, like, what can we do to have some critical hope moving forward in the future? So I’ll leave it there.
Martha Dow 07:11
That’s wonderful. Rita, any comments on that? And then also maybe thinking about what it’s like for you to teach on these topics in this particular time.
Rita Dhungel 07:21
Thank you. Yes, because nowadays, especially, I can speak for social work practice. Most of the young generations, they are inclined towards clinical social work practice, not necessarily leadership or community development practice, and that’s kind of my [worry]. I am trying to advocate that I know we need, a social worker has lots of different jobs, and then, regardless of the work you do, even in a hospital setting or even in a clinical setting, or in community setting, or even in teaching, you need to have the community building skills. These are core skills that all social workers are required to work in our social work practice, domestically, locally and internationally. Even in my classroom, most of the students, they feel like, “Oh, I’m going to be a therapist. I’m going to be a clinical social worker. I don’t think I really need [to take] this community development class.” And my worries are no we really need to do that, and that’s my role [coming into] play. To help them understand why community development course is important.
Rita Dhungel 08:31
And as I taught, always Rothman’s model. Rothman model [talks] about locality development, and then social planning, and social action. So you come together, community [comes] together and share their experiences, and then move into social planning, what you would like to see differently, what you want to do? And then when you move into the last layer of the pyramid, or the model, then we just move into actions. As I talked about social participatory action research, so it could be participatory action research, it could be any kind of actions. Loving, advocacy is really important. If you just come together and build [relationships], that’s great, but this is the initial stage of community development.
Rita Dhungel 09:18
Community development is all change. We want to change society. We want to promote social, mental, emotional, wellbeing of the communities. And this is the way we can do that. So this is my role, to help them critically understand what we do, why we do, and how we do, and in terms of how, I always say community development as an engagement tool, in the beginning with communities, but as you move forward, then you can see [it] as an advocacy tool, as a loving tool to change the society.
Martha Dow 09:56
I wonder. It’s so interesting hearing what you’re both talking about that connection around activism that you know, we move as we better understand the role of community development. I wonder, though Chelsea in these particular times, activism is feeling harder and harder to motivate, like the perception that an individual can make a difference is feeling, I think, more and more distance from most people. I certainly see that in my classroom. I wonder if you could speak a bit about that, and again, in relating it to your research areas of interest, but your classroom practice. So both of you, I’d be curious about that. You mentioned hope Chelsea, and I wonder where we are right now with that.
Chelsea Klassen 10:40
Yeah, we talk about this again in GDS 100. We talk about collective action problems, right? So that idea that it can be really hard to motivate people to do a single action, but it will actually benefit all of us if every individual were to undertake, or multiple individuals were to undertake, that action. And so those are the big, messy problems I think that in global development we’re trying to tackle.
Chelsea Klassen 11:07
I think activism and mobilizing, for me, I find a lot of strength for my own activism in solidarity. And I think that’s why space like public spaces where people can come together, opportunities for people to gather. I think those types of spaces, they take leaders to do that. And I think, hearing what Rita’s talked about with her class, I’m sure she’s been inspired by amazing leaders. And I’m sure she’s inspiring further leaders through her community development activism class. And I think if we can make spaces for people to both have their consciousness raised about an issue, and then have that opportunity to affect change in that.
Chelsea Klassen 11:53
So for me, and when I went to Afghanistan, the second time was 2020, and I went to teach ice skating, which is not a thing that most people would expect you to do, but it’s actually a very mountainous country, very, very beautiful country. Seeing the solidarity and the support that women were giving one another to achieve these new sports goals was really inspiring for me. And I was able to, I’m a trained ice skater, so I was able to teach them, so that’s the skill I was able to give, because it was difficult for them to find someone there who had that training knowledge. So that’s why I was there.
Chelsea Klassen 12:35
But you know that solidarity. And then in my research, my question for my masters was like, okay, why would women want to get involved in sports in Afghanistan when there’s so many things working against them? And so much of it was being inspired by other women that they had seen. So I think, yes, it’s really hard, and I want to try to cling to that hope that these little actions do add up. And I think if we don’t cling to that, then I don’t know what the other option is. Hearing from the women, I saw so and so on social media that she was able to bike that race, so that inspired me. And actually, with my participants, I even had some participants refer to other participants, which I thought was really cool, about how they had inspired them to join. So I think, you never know the power of someone seeing a photo of, I think that representation is really important. I think you don’t know the power of that solidarity until you really experience it. So I’ll stop there.
Martha Dow 13:40
Rita, I know relationship building is so important, and that sounds Chelsea, as you were describing that. That’s what that is to me. That’s what I hear around solidarity and sense of community and allyship, those sorts of things. I wonder your thoughts on that.
Rita Dhungel 13:54
I strongly believe in allyship, and I always tell that you, as an activist, you cannot recognize yourself as an ally. The community should invite you to join in their journey as an ally. And this is how I believe. And even though I am with UFV, teaching is my primary job, but I always consider myself as a structural social worker. I’m a community organizer, community builder. This is how is always in my head that okay, I’m a community builder. I have to do something outside of the classroom, and I always mobilize my students. It was a year ago that some of my community development students from Community Development class, they came together in partnering with other stakeholders. They organize, Canada Human Trafficking Awareness Day. They celebrated that day, and they did a great job. So this is how I also would like to mobilize and encourage our students to be part of this journey, because advocacy is really important. When we are working with marginalized, social, economic, marginalized, disadvantaged communities, then if we only focus on the work we do like regular work, then it’s hard to change the community. So we really need to come up with some political lenses, social justice lenses, to work in this, in this social work practice.
Martha Dow 15:39
One of the things as both of you are talking that I keep thinking about is with all that has happened, and obviously, the tariffs happening now, but prior to that, I we’ve talked lots about global aid that’s provided, what’s been shut down in the States. And I think one of the things that strikes me is, I wonder about awareness building that the aid provided globally by the US, that’s being shut down right now has implications, if for the entire world, right? But we don’t tend to think about that. We think about it as many of my students think about it as unidirectional. Many people do, right? So they don’t understand the context, the significance of aid in a broader way. I wonder your thoughts on that.
Chelsea Klassen 16:28
Yeah, this could be a whole thesis, I’m sure. But the aid industrial complex is real. And USAID was designed as a soft diplomacy tool. So I think there’s definitely strong critiques and criticisms to the industry and the infrastructure as a whole, but I think understanding that aid has also done a lot of important work, particularly in health and education that has had life changing implications for people in those countries is really important. And also understanding, if we think about money flows from the global north to the Global South and the Global South to the Global North, the Global South is actually subsidizing the Global North. And if you want to read more about that, you can look at some of Jason Hickel’s work. He’s done a lot on, is aid really aid? So this is the kind of stuff I love to talk to my students about, and I think aid is our class next week. But, you know, looking at these systemic things. We might think about aid as, like you said, unilateral, but trying to find kind of, some of the things we might, we might see a realignment with looking at these structures and looking at what’s, what’s really, what’s really going on.
Chelsea Klassen 17:56
But I’d be so curious to hear Rita’s thoughts on it too, because I wonder, is aid always a good thing for community development, too? Or, how have you as a community developer seen aid and other structures? I don’t know. Now I’m pivoting the question to you…
Rita Dhungel 18:15
I totally agree with Chelsea, what you said, and I reiterate, is critically important, especially in Global South, developing countries like India, Nepal, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. This is my privilege to work in some of the countries like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Unfortunately, after all the funding is kind of frozen, then I would say mostly, communities, especially who I work with, trafficking survivors, and then the employees working in NGOs (non-governmental organizations), local, community based organization, they lost their job, and it [has] significantly impacted their lives. So that was the time I had to think twice. It has benefited, and obviously we are changing, like a life changing implications. We can see that, but at the same time, what would be the alternatives? We don’t know. Everybody is uncertain how long the funding is going to be frozen, but the community, they need to eat. They need to feed their children, they need to pay for rent. So this is the challenge I recently saw in my visit in Nepal.
Rita Dhungel 19:41
And yes, people are super nice, super generous. People can support, but individual support [is] not good enough. So this is the time we all need to come together and think about how we would support those countries who are significantly impacted by this funding cancelation, or the, I don’t even know what it’s called, all the funds are not really canceled, but frozen right now, but it’s been almost two months. So that’s really sad, and it’s all power structure thing, right? The countries, they cannot do anything. They just go with the flow, and then, okay, we lost the job. Now I don’t have work. Anything. They can’t really narrate anything at this point. It’s all power.
Martha Dow 20:34
Given all that, you said, it’s, I think us trying to figure out and look, are there ways that this may build a community response, a collaborative response that has been sorely missing in many cases since COVID, right? We’ve got lots of research indicating how, we became isolated in many ways, and that in some ways, that hasn’t gone away. So I wonder about, much of what you’ve talked about in terms of the potential around some collective understanding and some collective action. I wonder if, it’s amazing how fast this conversation went, but I’d be really curious about if each of you could describe a little bit about what your experience is in the classroom in terms of challenges around that.
Martha Dow 21:18
We’re doing research in CHASI that starts to turn up sort of perceptions about othering as an example, that othering is becoming easier. There’s greater permission to other people who we perceive as different in some way that seems significant in that moment to us. Does that contribute to conversations about global development, community development. Resistance to it, I wonder. Rita?
Rita Dhungel 21:45
Yes, we had an opportunity to talk about [it] in our classroom setting. As you said, some people are really angry, so [am] I, [with] what’s happening. At the same time, it’s really interesting to see some of the people say, it’s not [a] nationality thing, I don’t want to talk about the nationality part. And some of the people are [resistant], [reluctant], even to go to the United States, right? And then talking about othering, people who are actually feel that they are excluded from everything, that they are the most impacted people, and then definitely their anger. And then we’re talking about, how could we make this happen like a collective action, even not inside the classroom setting, because not everyone feels comfortable talking in the classroom setting.
Rita Dhungel 22:43
That’s another way that we also need to build relationship with students outside of the classroom setting. And then some of the people came to talk to me and said that, because I know you teach community development, you teach research, and you always work with students outside of the classroom setting. Are you thinking anything [about] doing events, even to address, these are the things, how people are feeling, [what] people are experiencing. So these are the [conversations] I have. So it means definitely there are still some people in the classroom, either they are impacted or not impacted, but want to come together and move into collective actions, and against, right? So against what’s happening there, to change, at least aware people. To provide education is critically important. Everybody’s is being impacted. But some people, they just pretend that it’s not there, but it’s there.
Chelsea Klassen 23:39
Yeah, I think it’s such a privilege to be able to teach, especially in this, like you said, in this time, because students are trying to figure things out. And I think for myself as a student at UFV, what I’m so appreciative is, I did have such a diverse background of instructors. For the GDS program, it really is so interdisciplinary, so you are able to learn about a cross section of both theories, ideas. And I think that has been very valuable for me. And so I think what I try to do in teaching is, I just want to provide that space. I have my curriculum, I have that, but I also want to give them that opportunity to talk about what’s going on.
Chelsea Klassen 24:31
I mean, you can teach a development class and have USAID close, and not talk about that as a topical thing. So for me, I’m also trying to listen to what the students want to talk about. It can be hard to get them to engage sometimes, but making that space is, I think, really important, because there are a lot of people out there who will have different opinions than people around them, they’ll have different ideas. They’ll have been raised a certain way. And I think for me, what I was able to get out of UFV was I was able to see differences. And I think that’s really important. So I think trying to give that opportunity to see those differences and to explore them, learn about them, is just really, really critical. But, yeah, I think, we want to try to talk about the discipline, but we also want to try to make sure that we’re, I guess, for GDS, it’s really hard. Language is really hard, especially thinking about othering, like we go through in GDS and so many different you know, what’s an appropriate language. That’s my first intro classes. We talk about all the different terms that are used to divide up countries, but at the end of the day, they’re all political terms, and so choosing or associating or aligning yourself with one or another, for many students, they don’t understand that when they first come in, but once I can see, them progress throughout the class they might choose one or another term to kind of talk about differences between countries. Some people will say we should just throw them out all together. But you can really see how the students progress, and that showcases kind of where they’re thinking.
Martha Dow 26:19
That was wonderful. Thank you both for your time. Rita, as I get to hear more about the work that you do in Nepal and in other spaces and in your classroom, I’m just really appreciative as a colleague and someone who occupies space here at UFV, the work you do is so important. I hear students talk about it. So thank you for that, and thank you for taking the time today. Chelsea, every day, I have the privilege of being around you and seeing the influence you have over students in talking particularly about and reminding us on a regular basis about the fact that we’re global citizens. So thank you for that.
Rita Dhungel 26:54
Thank you.
Chelsea Klassen 26:55
Thanks.