{"id":276,"date":"2014-11-18T01:19:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T01:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=276"},"modified":"2014-11-18T01:26:06","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T01:26:06","slug":"r-e-a-l-fair-advocates-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/r-e-a-l-fair-advocates-social-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"R.E.A.L. Fair advocates social justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
BY ALLISON OPSON CLEMENT - NEWS EDITOR<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Students from Dr. David Foster\u2019s Psychology of Leadership class are gaining real-life experience with teamwork, promoting social justice through their project, a resource fair which will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 18 in the Werner University Center Pacific Room.<\/p>\n
The second-annual Responsibility, Equity, Accessibility and Leadership (R.E.A.L.) Fair will create a space to promote the services of attending organizations, said Foster, who taught the course that started the first R.E.A.L. fair last fall, and urged his students to take up the challenge again this year.<\/p>\n
This event is a chance to explore social issues facing the larger community and find help from the right source if they need it, as well as find a cause they may wish to support themselves through volunteer work or other support.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the hands-on experience, taking it out of theory and into practice, has been really useful,\u201d said Kristin Osborne, a student in the class and member of the event leadership team.<\/p>\n
Foster explained that people are graduating college, but still lack the skills companies need. These skills include abilities like communication and getting along with other people. Training in leadership and teamwork sets students ahead of the game, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrganizations are having a huge leadership crisis right now,\u201d Foster said. \u201cI think these classes are good for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event is sponsored by Abby\u2019s House in addition to the psychology students. Other organizations represented will include Stonewall Center, Green Dot, the Multicultural Student Union, the Office of Disability Services, Campus Public Safety, Peer Mentors, as well as over half a dozen others. According to Foster, this is a greater number than attended the previous fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cA side benefit would be that those organizations could network among themselves,\u201d Osborne said. The event includes a food drive to raise donations for and awareness of Western\u2019s resource for hungry students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt highlights the WOU Pantry, which a lot of people don\u2019t know exists,\u201d Foster said.<\/p>\n
A drawing for gift cards to local food businesses will be held at the end of the fair. Students may enter both by donating to the food drive and filling out a survey about the fair.<\/p>\n
Since the first program was a full year ago, Foster said, there was little left to work with, so this year\u2019s group resurrected the event nearly from scratch in many cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of organically came about,\u201d Osborne said of the process. She called this a fully collaborative effort. \u201cWe all walk around in a little pack.\u201d There haven\u2019t been many big issues, Osborne added, because \u201call the people in the group have the same objective.\u201d<\/p>\n
They brainstormed a list of organizations they wanted to invite, including some that were present last year as well as several new ones, narrowed that list down, and divided up the call list.
\n\u201cPeople have had lots of good ideas and we narrowed that down,\u201d Osborne said of the list.<\/p>\n
The group has been working on this project since the second week of term.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got some people and some talents that really fit,\u201d said Foster, adding that the group members are doing very well.<\/p>\n
Some psychology courses (including Foster\u2019s classes), may offer extra credit for attending the fair, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys are doing a really good job of reporting, advertising already,\u201d Foster said. \u201cMy goal after the first R.E.A.L. Fair was seeing it continue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Class project trains student leaders, revives gathering of resource organizations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}