After a split in the late 1990s, leaders of the volunteer groups Northwestern Community Development Corps and Organized Action by Students Invested in Society have decided to combine the two groups.
Shar Jaidev, outgoing co-chairwoman for NCDC, said NCDC leaders approached OASIS executive board members about the idea during Winter Quarter, though OASIS had also been thinking about it.
“We’ve always coexisted extremely peacefully together,” the Weinberg senior said. “It was a product of timing and new leadership, and it made a lot of sense for the organizations to become one.”
OASIS’s executive board will now exist as a committee within NCDC while OASIS president Joey Kahn will serve on the NCDC executive board, outgoing NCDC co-Chairwoman Kristen Cragwall said. Kahn said the organizations will pool their resources, including funding allocated to them by Associated Student Government.
The predecessor of the two groups, the Northwestern Volunteer Network, formed in 1988, Cragwall said. Jaidev said NCDC and OASIS separated in the late 1990s because of differing philosophies in terms of volunteering, as OASIS wanted to focus solely on direct service while NCDC tested the waters with educational advocacy.
“Whatever distinction there was at one point has become obsolete,” said Cragwall, a Communication senior. “We were doing such similar work that it would be easier for everyone.”
NCDC and OASIS operate very similarly. OASIS runs about 15 volunteer sites in Evanston and Chicago with about 200 to 250 volunteers, while NCDC has about 25 sites with 350 to 400 volunteers, said incoming NCDC co-Chairman Michael Alperin. Both groups host events, including NCDC’s Project Pumpkin and OASIS’s Outreach Day.Alperin said people would often confuse the two groups.
“The constant questions to both student groups was, ‘What’s the difference between OASIS and NCDC?'” the SESP junior said. “In both of our eyes, it was pointless really to continue to operate under separate names.”
NCDC also puts on a lecture series about race, poverty and inequality and heads the Living Wage Campaign, though Alperin said NCDC “doesn’t have a political bent.” He said an example of this is the group’s co-sponsorship with ASG of a Fall Quarter forum about the controversial blackface incident last Halloween.
Discussion of details of the merger is well underway, Kahn said, citing a Friday meeting about finances. Jaidev said the combination may not be permanent, as the next academic year will be a trial phase, but she said she didn’t think another split would happen.
“We share a lot of the same ideas, the same mission,” said Kahn, a Medill junior. “It’s not like College Democrats and College Republicans merging.”[email protected]
