Global Outreach (GO!) is a cultural immersion program rooted in social justice awareness and community engagement. Fordham University’s Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) is the department that runs the Global Outreach program, where several trips in the Winter, Spring, and Summer are made to interact with each trip’s community partnership and led by Fordham Students. Specifically, the GO! North Carolina trip will be exploring new community partnerships with The Industrial Commons and its enterprise, The COLLECTION. The Industrial Commons works to rebuild a diverse working class based on locally rooted wealth, and The COLLECTION is an ethical and sustainable brand built on the re-emergence of the textile industry through circular and local supply chains in North Carolina. The themes inherent in this trip are sustainable business production and building voice, agency, and equity in the community as well as the workforce. The GO! North Carolina team will be interacting with these community partners to learn more about the landscape of rural North Carolina through conversation and immersion, the community context in which our partners work in through walkabouts and visits, and comprehend the issues that communities face in order to better understand the solutions that our partners are providing to their communities. Our goal is to be able to take our experiences back to the Bronx, where we can face community issues here with an expanded toolkit of ideas and solutions
