Under Construction  Social Action Workshop   (SAW)  ROAD INC.

 

    The Social Action Workshop (SAW)

This program started as a drop in center for local teens and was incorporated as a non profit organization The ROAD INC. All that was accomplished can be attributed to the wisdom and fortitude of Lila Stunder. She remained a stalwart on the Board of directors and made sure that we were funded. She enlisted the support of Mel Greenberg to help us thru the rough times. All those who were helped or enriched owe Lila their thanks. She made it possible.

What's in a name?
The name ROAD was dropped because at the time there were a series of organizations, PATH the Bridge that carried the stigma of drugs or mental illness, people with drug or mental problems. Every time our staff attended community meetings it was assumed that we recovered drug addicts and the participants in the programs had problems. The name Social Action Workshop was adopted to avoid the baggage and stigma attached to such names. We were in fact a workshop dealing with social action. This name was neutral and did not attach stigma to staff or participants.

Programs
There were three programs at the SAW that will be discussed. The CareLine, Teens in Action and the Young adult Coop are presented as programs operated by SAW. All of the programs were based on social science and were continually refined by the on going research protocols built into all of the programs.

The research took place in what we called Lifestyle Labs.  the labs were built into the everyday activities and were transparent.  For example, the Teens in Action Seminars in DC and at the United Nations in NYC were originally 3 or 4 days.  Based on the data from the labs we started to run 1 day seminars because they had nearly the same impact as the longer ones. 

All of the program activities at the SAW were based on the general social theory, the locus of the behavior is the situation and not the person. Aron put it this way "The real causes are social forces. These forces vary from one society to another, from one group to another, from one religion to another. They emanate from the group and not from the individuals taken separately." Raymond Aron (1970,p 37)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This site was last updated 02/21/11