Reconciliation is a valuable framework for examining how we embed ourselves in public service and activism. It is a commitment to repairing harm and recovering what is lost. Reconciliation means holding ourselves and those around us accountable as we work towards creating a more just world.

At the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, we design and facilitate programming that prepares students for lives and vocations of public service, advocacy, and activism. Applying a reconciliation framework to these learning experiences calls us to reimagine and rebuild interpersonal and institutional relationships that identify and repair past and current harms, and restore trust so we can move forward in true solidarity with those most affected by injustice. In this conversation, students and staff at the McCarthy Center discuss this framework of reconciliation in our work, lives, and the future as an ethic to build a more socially just and equitable world.

Contributors are: 

Angeline Vuong is the Assistant Director, Public Service Programs at the Leo T. McCarthy Center

Jacqueline Ramos is the Community-Engaged Learning Program Manager at the Leo T. McCarthy Center

Isabel Tayag is a Community Empowerment Activist at the Leo T. McCarthy Center

Zoe Baker is a McCarthy Fellow in San Francisco at the Leo T. McCarthy Center