Hive Be Good

Last night, Global Scholars and members of the Poly community had the opportunity to participate in a unique event: Hive Be Good. The idea behind Hive Be Good is that a big group of people comes together to disucss a “social riddle” and try to learn about and take some kind of action. The topic for our event was affordable housing. 

One of the most interesting parts of the evening was hearing from experts in the field, from an inspring woman who was once homeless herself to a city planner from the City of Los Angeles whose job focuses on afforable units. After a few speakers, we broke into small groups to discuss the issue. 

I am really interested in the concept of Hive Be Good, because I think it has the potential to motivate people with resources to use them in new and creative ways. However, I want to highlisht an important lesson I learned on my GIP trip to Nicaragua: serve, don’t help. This idea is important because priveleged, educated people have a tendency to go into a situation thinking they have some kind of expertise that enables them to solve others’ problems. At its core, Hive Be Good is about connection people who are affected by a certain social issue and those who have resources but may not know much about the issue. In this model, those priveleged people have the opportunity to listen, learn, and offer what they have as a tool. 

However, last night, in a group of about 50 people, there was only one person who had been homeless in their lives. At my table, there were four Poly students, two Poly teachers, and one woman who works at an organization tangentially relation to affordable housing. This meant that our conversation consisted of a lot of “Maybe we could do this... I don’t really know though.”

I would still love to be a part of another HIve Be Good event in the future, and thank you so much to everyone who worked to put it on!