Boston Workers Circle relaunched its Teen’s Acting for Social Change (TASC) program in 2023, with the support of CJP’s Teen Community Impact Grant Fund. One TASC’er, Rose, wrote about her experience in TASC and at the TASC retreat. She highlights her learning about mutual aid and then connects that learning to the TASC retreat and learning about her own power to effect change as a young person.
“This year in TASC we’ve been talking about many important topics and things that are important to us. In a past session, we had BWC’s social justice and cultural organizer Zohar Berman come in and guest speak about mutual aid. Zohar taught us the differences between mutual aid and charity. After learning a little bit about mutual aid and what it means, we brainstormed places where mutual aid could be helpful in our communities. Mutual aid is when community members come together and support each other to meet everyone’s needs. Mutual aid can look like many things. One example of mutual aid is food distribution projects; this type of mutual aid could distribute food to those who are unable to shop for themselves or do not have the resources to afford food. Another example of mutual aid is child care. This child care could be for kids whose parents are very busy and working or might just need to go fulfill a task such as jury duty.
“A couple weeks later, throughout a TASC retreat, we learned the ways that kids can create change in our communities! We talked about the idea of adultism and how adults often take advantage of their power. This showed us that we are capable of anything we put our mind to. I believe that the retreat and learning about adultism was crucial to our learning because with it we can create change and found things such as mutual aid. After the retreat, everybody is ready to come to TASC with a determination to be productive and change the world for the better.”
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