Community Engagement is a great thing to put on a resume for school and scholarship applications. Go over opportunities students can explore at their potential transfer school or what opportunities might be possible at BBCC. This topic may be one of the more difficult concepts in the program to cover and have a conversation with your mentee about, so feel free to ask for help from the TRIO Advisors. The below information helps provide some definitions and provides a framework for beginning the discussion. Look at ways you may have participated in this while attending BBCC or opportunities you've seen at your current institution.
Community Engagement is a process that involves working with communities, groups, or individuals to address issues, make decisions, and solve problems that affect them. It can also be defined as a strategic approach to an organization's community stakeholders, which involves building relationships, managing interactions, and developing communications. The goal is to achieve outcomes that benefit both the community and the organization.
Engagement is not generally driven by a 'model' so much as by a framework of guiding principles, strategies, and approaches. This framework is based on principles that respect the right of all community members to be informed, consulted, involved and empowered. Community engagement employs and range of tools and strategies to ensure success. It also places a premium on fostering and enhancing trust as a critical element in long-term, sustainable engagement and effective governance. To be successful, it must encompass strategies and processes that are sensitive to the community-context in which it occurs. https://aese.psu.edu/research/centers/cecd/engagement-toolbox/engagement/what-is-community-engagement
In recognizing the needs and aspirations of all participants, community engagement promotes the idea that, through intentional interactions between government organizations and communities, community members can – and do – influence policy making. That is, community engagement’s promise is to better engage community to help make better public decisions. It is, thereby, both an orientation toward the importance of community members’ lived experience to influence interactions between government organizations and communities, and an approach that guides the process of those interactions. https://granicus.com/blog/what-is-community-engagement/
Engaging in service learning is just one method of community engagement. A lot of available opportunities for service learning have arisen out of seeing a need in the community and some organization or group rise to fill that need. Service learning combines learning goals and community service in ways that enhance both student growth and the common good. Some college courses have a service learning project built into them, and a number of different parties can benefit from such a project. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-through-community-engagement/
With the next TRIO Grant Cycle, there is a priority to incorporate models of service learning and community engagement into the program, and we are looking at ways we can begin implementing this now. Community service opportunities will become more common as we look at building partnerships within the community that TRIO and BBCC serves.
Guiding Discussion Questions and Tasks:
What community engagement/service have you been involved in at BBCC? At your current institution?
Have any of your courses incorporated a service learning project? If no, do you know of any classes that do?
Does your institution offer any programs like an alternative spring break?
How could you start/build your own service learning project or community service opportunity?