About

Whitman Direct Action (WDA) is a non-profit, open-source, and student-run organization from Whitman College dedicated to helping marginalized people by promoting economically and environmentally sustainable community development. Our goal is to see a world where sustainable practices have replaced destructive ones, where equitable mutual and synergistic opportunity replaces oppression, and where critical thought and action replaces apathy and fear.

Then

Since its founding in 2005, WDA’s structure has been purposefully freeform. It is now tradition to, at the beginning of a new year, openly discuss a number of potential projects until a single project direction is settled upon. Therefore, there has been no specific project that the group has sought to “stand for,” instead, the “action” that the group has taken from year to year has changed depending on the proposal passed by that year’s WDA members.

Its first project, the Build-A-House Project, began before WDA had been formally established. The team built a home for a family left destitute by a fishing accident. Building off the success of the first project, the Central American Biodiesel Project in 2006 entailed hosting two international biodiesel conferences and co-founding biodiesel cooperatives and resource centers with organizations throughout Honduras and Nicaragua in order to help marginalized communities grow and produce their own fuel. WDA’s most recent project, the Sadhana Clean Water Project, was motivated by our belief that access to clean water is a basic human right. It involved publishing a Water Book, which is now a resource for nongovernmental organizations across India, hosting a water conference, and conducting a comprehensive study of the water scenario in India’s rural Kolwan Valley.

Now

We’re taking on problems face by immigrants in our own community, and problems faced by their communities in Mexico.

On this site, you can: