Switch4Good

Opportunities

Position: Service Learning / Volunteer or Internship Opportunity

Position Description:  Switch4Good is an evidence-based nonprofit with a mission to wean the world off dairy. The human body is not designed to digest mother’s milk after infancy—let alone the milk of a different species. Our work is to help provide people with information, resources, and strategies that will enable them to understand the impact of dairy-based products on their own health and the health of the planet. Our education projects are designed to assist students in developing their own understandings through research and action, and to advocate for plant-based changes in whatever community they are part of or industry they may one day work in.

To help develop students’ knowledge of the connection between their food choices and personal and planetary health and the competencies, in addition to the skills required to make a difference in their community, Switch4Good provides Service Learning programs to high school and college students. Service Learning is a “teaching method where guided or classroom learning is applied through action that addresses an authentic community need in a process that allows for student initiative and provides structured time for reflection on the service experience and demonstration of acquired skills and knowledge.” (Cathryn Berger Kaye, The Complete Guide to Service Learning). The focus is on what the student is learning and howthatlearning is applied to authentic situations. This program differs from other plant-based education initiatives in that its core teaching methodology will focus on service, rather than campaigns to change institutions. Students will learn, educate others, and prioritize helping to solve a problem they identify in their community. They may go on to complete campaigns, but the focus of this program is to impart an interconnected, interdisciplinary, nuanced understanding of the effects of the food system on the environment. 

Students who engage in Switch4Good’s Service Learning programs can expect to achieve these learning objectives:

• Gain a deeper understanding of the effects of animal agriculture on the environment, people, and health

•  Quantify the impact on personal and planetary health of reducing animal products in one’s diet

•  Gain effective communication skills that enable them to critically engage with this topic with varying audiences including their peers and the public

•  Improve reading comprehension skills for scientific papers and learn to clearly communicate findings with a non-scientific audience

•  Be able to identify professional and advocacy goals and develop professional skill

 Student responsibilities:

Student Deliverables: Concrete products that students will present as evidence of the knowledge, understanding, or skills that they have gained and the action they undertook. These can be in a variety of forms and media (written, verbal, visual, performance-based, presentations, etc.).

 Examples include:

• Physical materials for peer education such as posters, brochures, fliers, etc.

• Digital materials for peer education such as slide decks, websites, social media posts, etc.

• Plant-based, affordable recipes appropriate for students living in dorms Students, educators, and Switch4Good staff will establish the required number of deliverables for each project based on the “investigation” done by the students and the appropriate workload to fit within the school’s requirements.

Feedback from students will help the Switch4Good staff better understand how students are progressing toward the goals they determined for themselves at the beginning of the term. This feedback will take the form of weekly surveys and brief monthly check-in meetings, with more on a case-by-case basis.

• Surveys will ask about the work students completed that week and how they are advancing toward overall objectives.

•  Surveys will ask students to critically reflect on how they felt while completing their work and how they view the importance of their work in their community.

• Surveys will ask students for feedback on the lesson plans, communication with Switch4Good, and anything else they feel is relevant to share about how the program could be improved.

• Surveys will ask students formative questions about the content of the lessons to monitor progress toward learning objectives.

Check-in meetings will allow students to expand on what they wrote in weekly  surveys and foster a more personal relationship with the Switch staff.

Final Evaluation

The last hour of our time together on the project will be spent on reflecting on this program through a meeting with Switch4Good staff. We will debrief program elements and students will have the opportunity to provide final feedback on the structure and execution of the program. This feedback will be critical to improve the program in future iterations. We will also provide time for students to reflect on their personal development over the course of the program, within the structure of the learning objectives listen in the “Overview” section of this document. This will take the form of a written worksheet and verbal discussion of the reflection questions.

Interested? Contact lucyw@switch4good.org