I take systems thinking to be the study of how a group of people work together and the steps they take to accomplish a certain goal. I believe this is a concept that appears in many different levels. It can be as small as how a family works together to resolve issues or get things done to how a major corporation is run and all of the different smaller systems come together to form that large corporation. I believe systems thinking can also be viewed in a worldly sense. Every town, state, region, country, continent is its own system. Each separate system comes together to make the system we know as “Earth”!
Systems thinking is what helps things come together. It is different ideals and opinions coming together to make something work. Two examples of systems thinking that have really stuck out to me for the past year is the Outreach Program with Chase Dreams Not Boys. With the Outreach Program, because I am the Outreach Chair it was my responsibility to locate sites and coordinate with guidance counselors, principals, and site coordinators to set up the program at a high school and at a community center in DC. Luckily, our President Felicia Baez was able to help me a lot throughout the process of trying to nail down sites and set up the program. Setting up the program required a lot of effort from different groups of people. It was imperative that I remained in constant contact with the people of main contact at the sites to ensure that we had rooms designated and that there were girls that were actually going to come to the program! I also had to work with the mentors that would be volunteering with the girls. I had to ensure that they were all trained and had a good grasp of what it is we would be doing throughout the program. We are now in our final week of the program and it has been awesome to watch everything come together. The school and community center have been really awesome in communicating when there are any issues that may pop up, for example when school is canceled for snow. They have also done a great job at making sure we have girls that come to each program! The mentors have helped so much to facilitate discussions and build relationships with the girls. They have gone above and beyond in making sure that we are making a significant impact on the girls in the program. So much so that the school and the community center would like us to return next year and hold the program again. Things like that really excite me because it makes me feel like we are actually making a difference in the lives of the girls that participate in the program. All of that is due to the smaller systems that came together to make this large one work.