scholarly journals In Search of Community; Humanitarian Engineers and Circles of Friends

2014 ◽  
pp. 509-524
Author(s):  
David R Munoz
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Credit Union ◽  
School Construction ◽  
Community Project ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
The Village ◽  
Learning Projects

Circles of friends (trust) as a means for indigenous community development have been actively encouraged in Colinas de Suiza, Honduras. This effort at enhancing long-term community resilience is the latest in a 10 year relationship that includes a water project and two school construction activities within the village of ~10,000 economically poor. These techniques were utilized in part to provide an example of communities in partnership for universities involved in developing educational programs around practically-based engineering service learning projects. To enhance community involvement, children were included in the development process through creative educational activities involving music, graphical arts and dance. The initial two-month experience culminated in a fiesta or celebration of community. Project evaluation has yielded several positive indigenous results; namely the construction of a dining hall, supported by the local community where poorest children are fed, and the formation of a locally managed credit union where the local people can place their savings and apply for microloans for microenterprise development. This project is further testament to the belief that humanitarian efforts are most effective when performed consistently within the same locations and where the entire community is invited to organize, identify, discuss and solve their own problems.

scholarly journals Improving the Long-Term Sustainability of Service-Learning Projects: Six Lessons Learned from Early MIT IDEAS Competition Winners

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Diana Jue
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Target Populations ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
History Of ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Learning Projects ◽  
Ongoing Concern

An ongoing concern of service-learning projects is whether they can benefit target populations in the long-term. Too often, service-learning projects end before a real deliverable is presented to the community. At MIT, a short history of service-learning projects can be documented through the IDEAS Competition, an annual competition that awards small monetary prizes to student teams that have designed and implemented innovative projects to positively impact underserved communities. This article analyzes how winning projects of the first five IDEAS Competitions evolved or dissolved. From the experiences and wisdom of these early winners, this article offers six pieces of advice to students and academic institutions seeking to implement service-learning projects: 1) Seriously consider implementation from the beginning, 2) Be concrete and realistic in the short term, 3) Be flexible in the long-term, 4) Build a multidisciplinary team, 5) Collaborate with a solid community partner, and 6) Prepare for continuity.

Service-Learning in Prison Facilities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Schaefer Hinck ◽  
Edward A. Hinck ◽  
Lesley A. Withers
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Learning Projects

This chapter presents a powerful case for the transformative potential of service-learning initiatives in prisons. It shows how undergraduate and graduate service-learning projects provide important learning opportunities to imprisoned students in Michigan, and also transform the perspectives of the free students who participate in the projects. Prison activism, in conjunction with strong educational initiatives that foster deep understanding of how economics, race, and class interact to produce the prison-industrial complex (PIC), holds great promise for achieving long-term policy and institutional changes in national, state, and local communities. The chapter argues that activism, by itself, presumes the existence of an audience that is rational, compassionate, informed, and capable of developing an enlarged understanding of the systemic forces that produce and sustain the PIC.

Ethnographic Service Learning: An Approach for Transformational Learning

Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie A. Medeiros ◽  
Jennifer Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Transformational Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Transformational Experiences ◽  
Learning Projects

Trends in higher education pedagogy increasingly point to the importance of transformational experiences as the capstone of liberal arts education. Practitioners of ethnography, the quintessential transformational experience of the social sciences, are well-positioned to take the lead in designing courses and term projects that afford undergraduate students opportunities to fundamentally reshape their understanding of the social world and their own involvement within it. Furthermore, in the United States, colleges and universities have become proponents of service learning as a critical component of a holistic educational experience. In this article, we describe how service learning can be incorporated into training students in ethnographic field methods as a means to transformational learning and to give them skills they can use beyond the classroom in a longer trajectory of civic participation. We discuss strategies, opportunities, and challenges associated with incorporating service learning into courses and programs training students in ethnographic field methods and propose five key components for successful ethnographic service learning projects. We share student insights about the transformational value of their experiences as well as introduce some ethical concerns that arise in ethnographic service-learning projects.

Service-Learning Projects: Meeting Community Needs

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly A. Peterson ◽  
Jean Yockey ◽  
Peggy Larsen ◽  
Diana Twidwell ◽  
Kathy Jorgensen
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Learning Projects

scholarly journals Reflect, Analyze, Act, Repeat: Creating Critical Consciousness through Critical Service-Learning at a Professional Development School

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Andrews ◽  
Susan Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Professional Development School ◽  
Engaged Scholarship ◽  
Traditional Service ◽  
Community Engaged Scholarship ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Learning Projects

Universities engage students in traditional service-learning projects that often yield “good feelings”, even a savior mentality, but typically leave the root causes of social justice issues unexamined and untouched. In contrast to traditional service-learning, critical service-learning bridges this gap with an explicit focus on justice and equity, situating scholars’ work with the community rather than for it. A public university in the southeast offered a doctoral course that focused on critical service-learning in the context of a professional development school partnership. Designed as an ethnographic multi-case study, each graduate student in the on-site course represents a case. Data collection included interviews, observations, written reflections, and artefacts. The analysis revealed that developing critical service-learning projects with educators—rather than for them—supported participants’ critical consciousness. Findings and discussion highlight that facilitating community-engaged scholarship through critical service-learning impacts graduate students and middle-grades educators’ research interests, work, and future directions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document