Researching Cultural Challenges

Researching Community Partnerships

Gloria Spencer

Grantham University

Introduction

Service learning is a teaching technique used by institutions to teach students by combing learning objectives with community service, where they use their academic knowledge in order to meet and address specific community needs. Through service learning, students can easily learn in various ways such as interpersonal learning, academic learning and even developing their cognitive abilities. However, the challenges that students may face from service learning include time constraints and being at unease from working in environments that some may consider to be foreign. The Netter Center for Community Partnership happens to be one of the most famous service learning and community partnership programs in the country. The organization revolves around partnering with the communities in order to find solutions to the community needs such as education, environment and even health programs. “The Netter Center operates a variety of programs and initiatives that support its core mission of bringing to bear the broad range of human knowledge needed to solve the complex, comprehensive, and interconnected problems of the American city so that the local community of West Philadelphia, Philadelphia, the University itself, and society benefit” (Netter Center for Community Partnerships, 2017)

The organization partners with the community in art based programs, internship programs for undergraduate and graduate students and even other schools in order to improve the quality of education. These partnerships equip the students with greater social values, skills in other fields other than academic know-how and improving the community’s welfare generally. One of the past partnerships that Netter Center had with the youth in the community was a partnership to address violence and youth safety in the community. This was successful for a while before being stopped as a result of inadequate correlative support for the project that could have brought a significant change. However, this project is one that the center should consider partnering with the community for its success to be achieved. This is because violence in the society these days is a major concern to everyone requiring prompt action to be taken. “The young people conveyed their daily struggles to escape the violence and drugs in their schools and neighborhood.”(Kinnevy & Boddie, Fall 2001)

Volunteering opportunities in the organization crop up each and every time giving the students and the rest of the community a chance to better their community. Some of the activities they are involved in include Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative which is an activity set up to enable volunteers to gain nutrition education through growing, cooking and even consuming their own produce. Other partnerships they have include afterschool programs meant to educate younger children by offering free tutoring, and even programs that prepare high school students for careers in health care. This is not only beneficial to the volunteer but also the community by opening up many opportunities for both the young and the old while creating the cohesion among them. Performing of service learning enables a student to incorporate what they have learned in class into the community activities while volunteering enables a student to learn out of the class from experiential activities. According to the authors, “Like Harkavy and many other proponents of service-learning, we believe that this type of learning enhances academic performance, increases student understanding of an increasingly complex world, and discourages students from formulating and acting on easy ideologies(Kinnevy & Boddie, Fall 2001). Service learning also enables students to gain critical-thinking skills that will enable them to find solutions for complex issues affecting the society.

The Netter Center for community partnerships is a great asset to its community as a result of the numerous learning and volunteering opportunities it has provided. Through all of this, volunteers are open enough to serve their community freely with nothing in return. Nonetheless, service learning is similar to volunteering except that the student has to apply what they learn through their education to provide the services. Benefits of service learning include improving academic performances, enabling students to become critical thinkers and enabling a student to understand the world even more. The disadvantages to this are however minimal. They include inadequate time given to demands for school work and other social activities. (Pearce, 2018)

Bibliography Kinnevy, S. C., & Boddie, S. C. (Fall 2001). Developing Community Partnerships through Service-Learning: Universities, Coalitions and Congregations. Michigan Publishing. Netter Center for Community Partnerships. (2017). Program. Pearce, Cindi. (2018, June 27). Pros & Cons of Mandatory Community Service Projects Before Graduation From High School. Synonym. Retrieved from https://classroom.synonym.com/pros-before-graduation-high-school-8047802.html