Issues: Community Involvement

Community Involvement, Service Learning, & Social Justice

The terms Community Involvement, Service Learning, and Social Justice are all used to describe programs that involve an individual or group participating in an organized and purposeful endeavor to benefit another group, cause, or community. These terms get confusing.

Community Involvement is the blanket term for most service programs. Most businesses use this term because it covers the many and varied programs they choose to participate in. Schools often use this term describe their service programs that are co-curricular or occur outside of school hours. In the past fifteen years Service Learning has grown significantly as a tool embraced by educational programs that enhances and informs academic learning while effecting positive community change at the same time. Many schools and companies hire Prajna to improve or implement these programs aimed at achieving specific goals for students & business employees well as the issues or populations involved. Recently, many service learning and community involvement programs have begun integrating the idea of Social Justice into their goals and methods. These programs are designed to emphasize long-term positive change and dialogue involving key components to the idea of justice. These components include the ideas of “reciprocity,” charity versus justice, and equity versus equality.

Each of these types of programs benefits the organizations that utilize them. Through direct consultation and/or our own workshops, Prajna works with our clients to determine the models that best suit their goals and to build or strengthen their programs to reach those goals.

Community Involvement Consultations

We conduct several types of consultations and will work with you to determine the most appropriate approach for your school community or organization. Below are just a few examples:

• Remote consultation: Often a school, organization, or business will set up a series of pre-determined phone conversations followed by our review of curricula, programs, or projects. This is followed by feedback and suggestions. Many times, schools will then hire Prajna to write specific curriculum for certain academic disciplines, grade levels, or events. Businesses will hire us to design and possibly implement a service program for their employees. This process involves as much or as little interaction with staff as the school or business desires. We are also available to act as liaisons between volunteers and agencies for a pre-determined time to help with the first phase.
• One-day visit: This service involves a briefer assessment of an existing program or exploration of where clients might implement a program in their school or business. The day includes some or all of the following: interviews; shadowing of employees, faculty, or students; and direct observation of classes or programs. The visit is followed by an assessment report and suggestions for future direction.
• Multiple-day consultation: This option includes all aspects of a one-day visit but allows for multiple levels of assessment and deeper examination.

Community Involvement Workshops

The following workshops are available for adults and students. Workshops can be tailored to a school or business’s specific needs.

Community Involvement for Schools

We are available to work with school administrators and service directors to build or improve co-curricular community involvement programs, many of which allow students to conduct service outside of the school day. Programs can be designed to involve the entire school community or one specific segment of the student population, for example, the middle school grades only. Some programs are designed developmentally to increase the scope and awareness of positive change with progressive grade levels. Other programs are constructed around the strengths and passions of the teacher, administrator, or group of students in charge of the service. Prajna is also able to work with schools to combine aspects of service learning and social justice into involvement programs. [Top]

How Effective is Service Learning, and Where Do We Fit In?

This workshop provides the statistical proof that we who are implementing service know is true but don’t have the time to find. We provide recent evidence that shows the proven academic benefits from service learning for both educational institutions and their students.

The workshop also takes a few of the key elements of effective service learning and adapts them to real models and examples that can be directly applied to a school program. We might know that service learning is an effective teaching tool and promotes community awareness, a sense of purpose, and compassion in our kids, but actually making those goals materialize can be challenging. We work on the nuts and bolts of dealing with real questions like, “Where exactly do I fit into this community issue?” and “How can I make a difference? I’m just one kid, and the need is so big.” We discuss methods of applying service curricula that target both the apathetic as well as the “save the world” kid.

Finally, we talk about how you (the overworked faculty/staff person behind all this) can inspire and possibly win over your colleagues and administration on this whole idea of integrating service into the curriculum. There is no reason your job cannot get easier as your program gets better.

The Key Elements of Truly Effective Service Learning

Learning what the elements of a strong service learning or community involvement program are isn’t difficult. Choosing which elements to focus on at your particular school or business and then applying them effectively is the challenge. Many times, we get lost between the idea and the reality when implementing a service program. For example, a service coordinator might know the importance of reflection to a program’s success, but in practice it can become lost in the shuffle amidst planning a project, reflecting on it, and then planning another one. Likewise, other program aspects that seem simple, conceptually, can turn out to be not so simple when putting them into practice. These examples show how a school or business can go from providing powerful service learning opportunities to simply providing service. We also make our jobs more difficult by continually “re-inventing” the wheel.

Through this workshop, teachers and program leaders are able to walk away with a real game plan. They leave knowing what they are going to focus on and how they can make their programs more self-sustaining — requiring less energy to maintain.

This workshop is different from others that focus on successful service elements because it includes specific examples, models, case studies, time-saving tips, ways to avoid common obstacles, and tried-and-true guidelines to turning concepts into reality. [Top]

From Charity to Social Justice

Often schools and businesses can fall into a trap of unintentionally reinforcing negative ideas and stereotypes through their service programs. It is not enough to embrace and teach the idea of serving in our school or business cultures. We must inspire the choice to work for change that is deserved; to right what is wrong, to fill a gap that has been left open by our society so that a need will be filled.

At the same time, we must help volunteers embrace the idea that effective service is reciprocal. We encourage participants in service to open their minds to the idea that to serve someone else with the expectation that that person has nothing to offer you is arrogant. This is precisely the idea that perpetuates injustice. We must see all people as a resource to us. We must walk into each service experience with an expectation of reward. That reward may be knowledge, courage, or a history lesson. The idea of “Charity” alone is ineffective in creating real change. Service Learning is called service learning for a reason. It must be an exchange.

We will discuss this paradigm and how to integrate it into your program. Models and examples of application will be included. [Top]