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Leadership in Focus: Saron Ghebressellassie
By Elisa Birnbaum
September 2, 2008
This month in our Leadership in Focus series, we feature Saron Ghebressellassie, a young, impassioned activist and leader. With the promotion of social justice inspiring her every step, this impressive organizer has been at the forefront of innumerable causes, fighting for equality, justice and human rights in whatever capacity she is able. Whether helping residents of Darfur and Haiti, or immigrants and refugees living in her own Toronto community, this youth’s unfailing dedication and infinite achievements make her a leader worth keeping our eyes on.
CharityVillage: What inspired you to become a leader and to inspire others to become leaders?
Saron Ghebressellassie: What I try to do in my leadership is to instill leadership in others and try to build capacity that way. I see myself as a community organizer and I really believe in the potential of young people and students to be leaders. What I think is particularly interesting is that I, or other young leaders, are always referred to as future leaders. That tends to downsize the fact that we’re contemporary, current leaders as well.

“At every critical point of history where there’s been a cause that people rally around, there’s always been students at the forefront, as leaders. ”

My own inspiration comes from global student justice movements. Both historically and present day, students have been at the forefront of social justice causes and have been on the frontline of human rights movements - from the civil rights era in the U.S., to anti-apartheid organizing in South Africa, and to the current anti-war/peace movements across the U.S. and Canada. At every critical point of history where there’s been a cause that people rally around, there’s always been students at the forefront, as leaders. That’s been my own inspiration.
I love being in the university to see the amazing things students do. For example, in Chile two years ago, almost 790,000 high school students went on a protest demanding accessible post-secondary education and education in general. It resulted in its president issuing a public statement that met most of their demands. All those stories are so inspiring. And with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, students protested learning in Afrikaans - a European language; they wanted to learn in their native language. There was an uprising in 1976 and many youth were killed, but it was a turning point in the liberation for South Africa and brought [the cause] to an international scale.
CV: A lot of your work involves empowering women as leaders. Why?

SG: I grew up in Toronto community housing and saw that a lot of issues that face immigrants and refugees and people living in poverty disproportionately impact women. As a result, women are the ones that are going to be active in challenging and organizing to make better living conditions. Any kind of social injustice will impact women in a very unique way and they will be impacted disproportionately, as well. I’ve had the privilege to work with a lot of women in my surroundings who were trained to organize in order to make their lives better for themselves. I think it’s by default that women are more active. I did a lot of work with immigrants and was always working with women, single mothers, young women; they are strong and more involved.

CV: Do you feel organizations are doing enough to foster young leaders? What do you feel they could be doing better?
SG: I think there’s always going to be more to do. My criticism, and one piece of advice to the nonprofit sector, is that a lot of times they want to bring young folks to the table and it’s the ‘let’s add a seat to the table strategy; we’ll have a young voice there and then we’ve done our due diligence.’ But, while it’s definitely important to have those voices present at the table, I think, as youth, we want a little more than that. We want to be able to transform the conversations that are taking place at that table. Sometimes organizations are not prepared for that; it’s more than what they bargained for. Just hear what youth have to say; we have a lot to offer. I think organizations can learn from us and it’s also a mutual process. Don’t be afraid of having the youth actually be the leaders.

CV: Some say young people are not stepping up enough and defining themselves as leaders. Do you agree?
SG: I think there is some validity to that criticism. It’s hard for some student organizers to compete in a society that’s so obsessed with consumerism and materialism and very individualistic in nature. I feel that in Canada, in some ways, we are a little behind young people in other parts of the world, like South Africa. I think part of that is our societies are different. The reality is we do live in a very materialistic and consumerist culture. And iPods and cell phones are so pervasive and they are part of youth culture. One of the by-products of that is it’s going to be harder to galvanize and mobilize young people when organizers are competing with iPods and the latest brand names on television.

CV: How would you compare the challenges of your generation in galvanizing students versus those of prior generations? How do you think they’ll stack up as leaders compared to the youth of the past?
SG: I think there is a distinction and, again, it needs to be put in context. Whenever society is in crisis, the more oppressive the social conditions are for communities and young people, the more acute their resistance to it will be. Having said that, when you look at the sixties, the civil rights movement - the poster child for student activism - came as a direct result of segregation and oppressive conditions. And because we’ve made a lot of progress since then, it can tend to mollify student resistance.
Another aspect is that, while we have made progress, there are still a lot of allusions to equity, the feeling that everything is good. We are under the impression that we’ve achieved full equality. And we have in many respects, but there still is such a far way to go. But because the most obvious things on the surface appear to be perfect and that everyone has the right to participate in society on an equal footing, that has a big impact on how young people organize and how young people want to challenge systems of domination and that kind of thing.

CV: What’s the state of volunteerism for young people in Canada today? What can organizations do to better engage young people as volunteers?
SG: High schools in Toronto mandate 40 hours of volunteer community service before you graduate. That introduces youth to volunteerism in an interesting way. I think it’s a good opportunity for youth who may not otherwise want to get into the community and deliver something, to do so. In terms of volunteerism in general, I would never call myself a volunteer in that way. I have volunteered in many places, but I like to think of it as I’m being helped or I’m being taught. It’s a two-way street.
And while volunteering is like a service, where you come for a couple of hours, the more satisfying thing is to really be a part of a process, to do more than just sit somewhere. We want to contribute in the process as well. I think the most meaningful experiences will come from active engagement and leadership. The traditional sense of it is you’re assigned roles and tasks. But that’s not as much fun as helping the process and helping to organize.
CV: What about the work you do, are enough young people getting involved?
SG: To be totally frank, I’ve been a student activist at Ryerson for four years and activism does tend to come down to a few people taking on a lot of work; they are really doing the due diligence and the monotonous work. That’s always the question: how do we get more people involved? How do we engage more people, how do we do the proper outreach? The biggest barrier when we see that students aren’t active is that it’s said in a vacuum, saying students don’t care. But the reality is, with the rising costs of education, students are forced to take on one or two part-time jobs to fund their education in addition to doing a full course load. That makes it much more difficult to be active participants in their community or campus because demands are so high. I don’t think it’s complacency or indifference or apathy. The reality is that students are passionate about a lot of issues, but when you’re paying $20,000 to go to school, it’s a struggle to balance.
CV: How would you advise a young person on the best way they can effect change or get involved with an issue that concerns them?
SG: I think most youth have an idea that they’re passionate about. Very few want to get active for the sake of getting active. For example, youth come to me and say, ‘I’m living in Regent Park and we’re having serious issues with poverty or with police relations and the community, what can I do to make this better?’ So I find that they know what they want. They see conditions around them, what’s impacting their community and their lives, and it’s usually from that level that I’ll get approached. What I try to do is take their leadership in the way they want to address it. Whether it’s matching them with a local group in that area that is working on something similar, or giving them leadership capacity in something I’m working on, or just strategizing, I take leadership from them because they know what their issues are better than I do.
CV: After graduating from Ryerson’s radio and television arts program, you are now studying for a masters of education at the University of Toronto. Why did you choose this route for yourself?
SG: My masters is in the media stream in education so there’s congruity and overlap [with my bachelors program]. What I want to research and what my dissertation will look at is the role that students and youth have played historically and present day in advancing social justice and human rights. At the same time, I will look at the overlap in media, where media locates within this landscape and what role it plays in organizations and movements.
I hope to be a professor in social justice issues. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to end up doing but, ideally, what I’m trying to do is find where social justice and media intersect, the meeting ground of these two things. I want to be a professor because my inspiration comes from global student justice movements and I’ve always wanted to remain proximate to the university setting, to teaching, learning and exchanging ideas. I’m really inspired by students because, again, they’re young people and simultaneously the intellectual leaders of our society.
CV: Do you think media can be a force of change?
SG: I think the media is definitely the most powerful institution in our society. And I don’t think any other medium is able to truly shape public perception and ideas the way that television can. Because of that, it’s a very powerful and versatile tool. It’s with that understanding in mind that I hope to provide thought-provoking material, to be an advocate through media. I think, for the most part, media is upholding the status quo in many ways and has played a big role in perpetuating stereotypes of young people and other equity-seeking groups. So it’s a big part of the problem.
CV: Are there specific traits that make leaders great?
SG: I think the ability to listen and the willingness to learn. As a leader, you’re put up on this pedestal and you’re now the authority figure, the hub of truth. So it’s the ability to really learn, to be challenged, to engage in critical self-reflection, and embrace challenges as a leader and as an organizer, to be challenged in the work you do.
CV: What practical advice on leadership would you offer others?
SG: I would say the biggest thing is to remain inspired, no matter what they do, because everything falls into place after that. There are all kinds of logistical things that one has to take into account and all kinds of challenges in organizing, whether it’s not having enough personnel or capacity. But as long as they allow themselves to remain passionate, everything else will fall into place. As for me, it’s not hard to remain inspired because passion is always there, though sometimes there is burnout.
CV: Who are the leadership mentors who’ve inspired you over the years?
SG: Dr. Angela Davis is a professor at the University of California and presidential chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was also a civil rights activist, a poster child for equality in the sixties and seventies, and is notable for being a member of the Black Panther party. Today, she still does a lot of feminism work. She’s a big inspiration of mine. When I was with the Ryerson student union, we brought Angela Davis to Toronto for a speaking engagement as part of the equity conference. Over 400 students and faculty attended.
Another mentor is Judy Rebick. She was part of the pro-choice movement, played an essential role in that. Her work has resulted in the fact that, today, if women need to have an abortion, they have the choice; it’s such an inherent right.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.