Intention & Impact

The intention behind my project will be to showcase the importance behind immersion programs and their significance in the SJU community. Specifically, I will highlight why the process of immersing yourself in another community can lead to greater change and advocacy. 

The impact will be a call to action for readers in the St. Joseph’s community. Since my target audience is primarily SJU students, giving them a better understanding of these programs, the impact will be directed towards them and allowing them to have a greater insight into the injustices faced in different communities and hopefully encouraging people to take action. 

Worst & Best Case Scenario 

Worst case scenario for this project is that people will view immersions as “white savior.” Since immersion programs are centered around one community entering into another community, there can sometimes be a misconception that they are stepping on toes and people ask the question “who are these people to go into these communities?” One of the goals behind this project is to showcase the best case scenario, which is the impact immersion and service programs have on all members involved. It is both with and for others and this magazine is supposed to showcase this through highlighting community member’s voices. However, it is important to try to have all voices heard (including the voices of the community partners and communities people are immersing themselves in) so there is transparency from all sides involved and so no voice is unheard. 

Missing Perspectives 

One perspective that I may be missing are people from outside of the SJU community. My goal is to be able to reach out to the community partners, however for some of the specific programs I am looking at, for security reasons, I will not be able to reach out to these people. Although there is a reason behind not having these voices, it would still be nice to have an outside perspective so it diversifies to people outside of just this campus. If I am unable to hear from these people (the community partners outside of SJU) then their lived experiences will not be heard from their voice, but instead I will only have the perspective of the SJU student/faculty member who went on the immersion (which is not ideal). 

Incorporating Inclusivity 

Language:

Despite this, I will make my project inclusive not only through interviewing people of different backgrounds, but also making sure the language I use throughout is person first language. There are a lot of different students who have participated in these programs, so I will make sure my interviewees are diverse.

Research:

I will also make sure I do research before my interviews so I ensure my questions address different topics regarding advocacy and emphasize why these programs are beneficial for all involved. I will not insert my voice by any means during the interviews, however I will make sure my questions are well developed so we can have authentic conversations, which will help keep the project person centered, rather than “designer” centered. 

Design Elements:

Aside from the conduction of interviews and the need to make sure I am getting as many voices as possible heard throughout this project, I also want to make sure the tangible aspects of my project/design are inclusive. Making sure my chosen fonts are web design accessible, so I will focus on using ADA-friendly fonts, such as Tahoma, Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman. I will also make sure there is contrast between backgrounds and text, the colors I am using are bold and the text size is larger. 

While inclusivity and diversity in the people I am including in project is extremely important, thinking about audience inclusivity is also important and something I will continue to think about as I create my designs.