Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

Staying Engaged While Staying Home?: Service-Learning, Writing, And Covid-19, Christopher Iverson

The SUNY Journal of the Scholarship of Engagement: JoSE

As an approach to writing instruction that has traditionally required students to engage in in-person community projects, service-learning has also traditionally involved risks. For example, students engaging in service-learning without proper support often do not approach community partners with the appropriate respect, and when university stakeholders fail to make clear what their side can offer in a partnership, they can leave community partners in the lurch when the semester ends and students finish their community-engaged coursework. These risks can be mitigated through education and reflection for instructors and students alike. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing social distancing orders, however, left …

The Undocumented Experience: Best Practices Tool For Community Advocacy And Support From Nonprofits, Olivia Rosa

Community Engagement Student Work

Unauthorized immigration has been at the forefront of national socio-political debates over the past decade. The prevailing approach to immigrant integration in the United States is for individuals to use their own networks, and community resources to assimilate in their new communities. Yet a framework of support for newcomer immigrant integration does not exist, which promotes vastly different experiences depending on the state individuals migrate to where differing local, state, and federal sociopolitical contexts that define these experiences, particularly for undocumented individuals. The lack of an intentional support for this population furthers the experience of discrimination, racial profiling, fear of …

Bees And Feminism, Bruno Barbuto

Community Engagement Student Work

The topics of bees and feminism engage community members in thinking of how and what ecology and community look like. The project workshop will cater to the ways in which people think and speak about their very own thoughts. As well, this workshop seeks to focus on bees and feminism as a means to engage the community in cogenerated dialogue about bee- preservation and women’s issues. The desired outcomes produced from this topic delivers insight about community, sustainability, and the terms of participation for engagement purposes. This workshop is the reason bees and feminism are being talked about as a …

A More Equitable World: The Social And Economic Benefits Of Investing In Girls’ Education, Norway Dolan

Community Engagement Student Work

Education is a human right, although many children are not afforded this opportunity. Across the world, there are millions of children who are not in school and may not ever be able to complete their education. Specifically in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa, innumerable children are unable to go to school due to many barriers that prevent educational access; girls are especially impacted by these barriers, some of which include poverty, menstruation, and conflict. The rate of children who are displaced from school increases with age, encountering more challenges to educational attainment as they move through the levels in school. …

The Barriers To Family Engagement In Educational Settings, Julielys Ortiz-Leger

Community Engagement Student Work

We assume that educators are being professionally trained to handle distinct situations, especially pretraining to families. Most specifically, training on family engagement and ways to engage hard-to-reach families. Family engagement is defined as teachers and parents sharing the responsibility to nurture and help the students learn and meet their unique educational goals. Family engagement encompasses so many different factors and through this research and project, we will be exploring the barriers that families experience when it comes to engaging effectively in educational settings. Educators, administrators, social workers, community leaders, school psychologists, and other education-system-affiliated persons were invited to participate in …

Redefining “Comprehensive” Sexual Education: A Pedagogy Of Empowerment And Social Justice For K-12 Sex Education, Nina June Lee

Community Engagement Student Work

In the United States currently, there are significant gaps in sex education. Youth in the United States today are identifying more diversely in the past and many are not receiving the comprehensive sex education they deserve, creating negative sexual and social outcomes. Through examining the legacy of religiosity, white supremacy, power, and privilege in the United States, one can pinpoint how historical legacies still influence the sex education youth receive today. In conversations with research and theory, a solution to this issue may lie in creating applicable tools that allow educators to better accommodate the needs of youth they are …

Engaging The Heart And The Mind: Mindfulness In Service-Learning, Tevin Monroe

Community Engagement Student Work

Service-learning is a pedagogy which allows students to test their classroom knowledge in real- world scenarios, while also serving a greater good. Students may find that guided reflection of service-learning provides additional context to their classroom knowledge. Without proper guided reflection, students may not experience deep learning, or may not be critical of the role they play in communities. Mindfulness is one suggested practice to guide students’ reflection, and to promote the more equitable practice of critical service-learning. Through an interactive virtual workshop, students in a civic engagement fellowship program were taught principles of mindfulness and how they may be …

This Fence Makes No Sense: Developing A Community Engagement Curriculum For Swampscott, Ma, Elana Zabar

Community Engagement Student Work

This project sought to understand the best way to integrate non-exclusionary community engagement into Swampscott, Massachusetts. A curriculum that would encourage municipal officials of Swampscott, MA to develop a more inclusive community engagement process was built and presented to local community engagement practitioners, both affiliated and not affiliated with the municipality, for their feedback. The curriculum suggests creative engagement solutions the town can offer to community members throughout a project's timeline, from idea generation to problem definition, to project development, to post-implementation feedback. These methods of engagement, written under the lens of the Transformative Paradigm, were specifically designed to reduce …

College Student Empowerment And Impact Through Community Mentoring: An Evaluation Of Strong Women, Strong Girls, Amanda Moser-Shick

Community Engagement Student Work

The contributions made by college students as volunteer mentors are incredibly valuable in building our communities; and it is equally valuable to recognize the outcomes experienced by college students through such experiences. This experience positions college student mentors as learners and leaders, and examination of such roles must consider such complexity. This paper examines the outcomes experienced by college student mentors through the nonprofit organization Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG). A mixed methods program evaluation was completed that utilized secondary data from SWSG to examine outcomes experienced by the college student program participants. The three key evaluation questions were: (1) …

Childhood Food Insecurity In The United States, Bethany Tsiaras

Community Engagement Student Work

Childhood food insecurity in the United States is caused by a variety of barriers that lead to negative health outcomes for children. The COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted food insecurity for children. Policies and programs aimed at combating food insecurity have the potential to better serve the community with updates and changes.

Applied Behavior Analysis Services In Public Schools, Bridget Soraghan

Community Engagement Student Work

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have a very different educational experience than their peers. The process of providing more resources can be beneficial if insurance plans can help families with the cost and coverage. Research findings explain how more resources can help lower socioeconomic families with earlier diagnoses of ASD in their children. Insurance plans and different policies can provide more educational opportunities for those children. Having more coverage on insurance plans will allow more families to seek Applied Behavior Analysis therapy to work with Behavior Technicians. Public school districts can make opportunities available for non-neurotypical students by providing …

Substance Use Awareness: A Unique Look At Social Policy For Children And Families, Malik Hamm

Community Engagement Student Work

This work is a collection of substance use and addiction research gathered in order to assess substance abuse treatment and services in regard to equity and inclusion. The history of the U.S. government’s approach to substance use policy has led to stigma, criminality, and marginalization between groups in our community. Youth and families of all demographics are looking for ethical, informed mental health and substance use services to provide the best outcomes. Stigmatizing language, overly marketed tobacco and alcohol products, restrictive policy, and rigid law-enforcement tactics promoting the criminality of both adults and juveniles for possession, trafficking, and operating under …

Combating White Saviorism In Community-Engaged Learning, Eva Harrell

Community Engagement Student Work

The white savior narrative can be seen in a number of different places, including community- engaged learning courses at higher education institutions. We must address this issue because it prevents students and communities from attaining mutual benefits within these relationships, and the student’s perpetuation of saviorism can cause harm in the communities in which they work. In this study, a workshop titled “Interrupting White Saviorism in Community-Engaged Learning” was held for community engaged learning (CEL) instructors and associated faculty in collaboration with the Center for Community-Engaged Learning at the University of Minnesota. Participants were presented with information on white saviorism …

Sticky Situations: Understanding The Law And Life, Krystal Banks

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Law and life go hand in hand. Understanding the law and how it connects to life can be an effective tool in teaching youth and adults the value of making good decisions when it comes to life and the law. Sticky Situations places real-world situations in the context of learning how to apply the law and effectively respond to life's sticky situations.

Towards A European Framework For Community Engagement In Higher Education – A Case Study Analysis Of European Universities, Emma O'Brien, Bojana Culum Ilic, Anete Veidemane, Davide Dusi, Thomas Farnell, Ninoslav Scukanec Schmidt

Articles

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the development and piloting of a novel European framework for community engagement (CE) in higher education, which has been purposefully designed to progress the CE agenda in a European context.

Design/methodology/approach – The proposed framework was co-created through the European Union (EU)-funded project towards a European framework for community engagement in higher education (TEFCE). The TEFCE Toolbox is an institutional self-reflection framework that centres on seven thematic dimensions of CE. This paper follows the development of the TEFCE Toolbox through empirical case study analysis of four European universities and their local communities.

Findings …