Bridging Communities: CLI Student Focuses on Diversity at Home
As a junior in high school, Isabelle Riback knew how she wanted to spend her summer vacation: learning about issues that mattered to her, addressing them at the community level, and making new friends from all over the world. To cross off these items on her summer wish list, Isabelle traveled from her East Coast hometown to Evanston, Illinois, where she joined Center for Talent Development’s Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) at Northwestern University. Once there, she noticed an unexpected benefit to her summer plans. “It was sometime in the second week that I realized what I was gaining through the program,” Isabelle reflects. “Access to diversity. Most importantly, diversity of thought.”
Diversity guided Isabelle’s CLI portfolio project, which allows CLI students to identify an issue they are passionate about and create a plan for making change to implement after the program. She researched the demographics of a New York town near her home. “Just seven miles of distance meant we lived in completely separate worlds,” she explains: the two towns differ greatly in terms of income and ethnic makeup. Through the elements of a CLI portfolio project—regular assignments, assessment, and a final presentation—Isabelle developed a plan to unify the two communities. After returning from CLI, she began a diversity program to connect peers at her temple with young members of the nearby town’s AME Zion Church. Isabelle hopes to encourage a dialogue about social justice and collective action. Whether her program leads to discussions, events, or a long-term foundation, Isabelle is intent on addressing urgent, real-world issues from education to wrongful convictions.
Launching a community initiative requires inquisitive thought and active listening, two skills Isabelle cultivated at CLI. “We were expected to always question,” she says of her time in the program, indicating that challenging the status quo takes practice. “This is a mindset,” says Isabelle. “It doesn’t always come naturally, so being mindful matters.” When CLI discussions turned to hot-button issues, Isabelle worked to “listen and understand,” particularly when faced with speakers or fellow students whose beliefs differed from her own. “I came to understand that these disagreements are what made the experience special,” Isabelle shares, noting “in a world where almost every aspect of our lives seems partisan, CLI provided an opportunity to mend those gaps.”
With the end of high school in sight, Isabelle is poised to face a future of complex, pressing societal concerns—and now might be the perfect time for her to address them. “We’re next in line!” she says of the importance of civic engagement among young people, noting a need for new ideas from her generation. “I learned that despite our age—perhaps becauseof our age—we all have the ability to take agency over prevalent social justice issues,” Isabelle explains, discussing the impact of CLI on the way she views community change. “I have become much more confident in my understanding of what is going on in our world which, in turn, has given me greater confidence to speak out, participate, and take action.”
Ross Middleton is an independent writer and formerly part of CTD’s Summer Program staff. He received his BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence.