Thanks for your article, and absolutely agree! Here at Notre Dame, we engage business and nonbusiness undergraduate students in a curricular program designed to provide technical assistance and mentoring to low-income entrepreneurs at the post-launch stage of their businesses. Our program is a community-based, service-learning experience, and this approach is characterized by reciprocity of value and shared learning, application of academic skills in a real-world context, and an experiential process that provides a useful service to the community while enhancing student skills. We tell the students at the start of the semester that we have an expectation that there will be a consequential change in the enterprise that students work with as a result of the students’ participation. This can only be achieved through a sincere commitment and interest in the social or micro entrepreneur’s business, and by mentoring the entrepreneur with a willingness to listen and learn, and to provide thoughtful, measured feedback and coaching. (And we - the faculty directors - are on the other side, mentoring and coaching the students.) It’s an audacious challenge, but one that students rise to over and over again. Many students have advised that this is a capstone experience in terms of their undergraduate curriculum, an opportunity to apply skills and approaches learned not just in the social entrepreneurship coursework, but in their business and nonbusiness courses as well. And it’s why we have seen more than 1,500 students take our social entrepreneurship and microventure consulting classes since we started teaching them (and we only offer a several sections per year). Thanks again!
It is never too early to plant the seeds of service as a path to community problem solving! I direct a middle school problem-based service learning program in Indianapolis, Indiana. IMAGINE: Students for Global and Local Action challenges teams of four or more middle school participants to become ‘solutionaries’ in their local and/or global community. This past year our participating teams addressed the critical issue of obesity in Indiana by developing the following projects: creating a cooking show for kids; surveying their entire school on all facets of health and wellness and sharing the results with their entire school community; creating a public service video about sleep deprivation; held a community dinner they prepared themselves and holding a nutrition expo for second graders at an urban charter school. The teams gather for a kick-off conference in the fall and then develop their projects at their schools before returning to share their success stories. At the conference they meet and interact with local organizations whose mission addresses the annual topic. As at the university level, the students develop an awareness of a critical issue in their own community and upon completing their projects take away new knowledge, understanding, awareness and most importantly, a sense of empowerment that they can and should be helping to solve community problems. Perhaps they will be the social entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
COMMENTS
BY Melissa Paulsen
ON June 16, 2015 10:29 AM
Thanks for your article, and absolutely agree! Here at Notre Dame, we engage business and nonbusiness undergraduate students in a curricular program designed to provide technical assistance and mentoring to low-income entrepreneurs at the post-launch stage of their businesses. Our program is a community-based, service-learning experience, and this approach is characterized by reciprocity of value and shared learning, application of academic skills in a real-world context, and an experiential process that provides a useful service to the community while enhancing student skills. We tell the students at the start of the semester that we have an expectation that there will be a consequential change in the enterprise that students work with as a result of the students’ participation. This can only be achieved through a sincere commitment and interest in the social or micro entrepreneur’s business, and by mentoring the entrepreneur with a willingness to listen and learn, and to provide thoughtful, measured feedback and coaching. (And we - the faculty directors - are on the other side, mentoring and coaching the students.) It’s an audacious challenge, but one that students rise to over and over again. Many students have advised that this is a capstone experience in terms of their undergraduate curriculum, an opportunity to apply skills and approaches learned not just in the social entrepreneurship coursework, but in their business and nonbusiness courses as well. And it’s why we have seen more than 1,500 students take our social entrepreneurship and microventure consulting classes since we started teaching them (and we only offer a several sections per year). Thanks again!
BY Caroline
ON June 16, 2015 06:06 PM
This is indeed a necessity to our universities programmes
BY Deborah Thornburgh
ON June 18, 2015 03:12 PM
It is never too early to plant the seeds of service as a path to community problem solving! I direct a middle school problem-based service learning program in Indianapolis, Indiana. IMAGINE: Students for Global and Local Action challenges teams of four or more middle school participants to become ‘solutionaries’ in their local and/or global community. This past year our participating teams addressed the critical issue of obesity in Indiana by developing the following projects: creating a cooking show for kids; surveying their entire school on all facets of health and wellness and sharing the results with their entire school community; creating a public service video about sleep deprivation; held a community dinner they prepared themselves and holding a nutrition expo for second graders at an urban charter school. The teams gather for a kick-off conference in the fall and then develop their projects at their schools before returning to share their success stories. At the conference they meet and interact with local organizations whose mission addresses the annual topic. As at the university level, the students develop an awareness of a critical issue in their own community and upon completing their projects take away new knowledge, understanding, awareness and most importantly, a sense of empowerment that they can and should be helping to solve community problems. Perhaps they will be the social entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
BY Ram Nookadee
ON June 16, 2017 01:45 AM
Thanks for sharing - We in Mauritius would like tohave your expertise