Post on 30-Dec-2015
description
Social Innovation with Communities: Integrating Social Entrepreneurship, Service Learning, and Civic Engagement
WORKSHOP:
Discussion Structure
Introduction
Three Stories
Small Group Discussion
Large Group Discussion
Key Take-Away Points
Presenters
Michele Kahane, Milano Management, The New School
Kristin Joos, Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, University of Florida
Cynthia Lawson, Parsons Design, The New School
Fabiola Berdiel, Graduate Program International Affairs, The New School
Context Setting Diverse models of university-community engagement: service
learning, civic engagement, social entrepreneurship
Emerging Vision: university as hubs for social innovation in communities, harnessing their creative and intellectual capacities in partnership with communities to innovatively & sustainably address the social, environmental, and economic challenges confronting society
A compelling case
Three StoriesStreetlight Program for Adolescent
Palliative Care- Kristin Joos
Solar Decathlon– Michele Kahane
Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Design– Cynthia Lawson & Fabiola Berdiel
Three Stories
Brief Description
Intended Learning Outcomes
Expected Community Outcomes
Challenges that presented themselves
Key Innovations in Pedagogy
Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Brief Description: Overview & Context
Honors Intro to Social Entrepreneurship course Spring 2006, 15 week semester, 25 students
Students from diverse disciplines
Nascent Social Venture, launching as program at local research hospital One staff (the director)
Budget of less than $5000
Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Goals (expected outcomes for students &
community)
Students Community involvement, systems thinking, strategic
planning, creativity given limited resources, building teams, and sense of purpose
Streetlight Co-create action plans for programming to address the
Director's stated needs & hopes
Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Innovations in Pedagogy
Brown visited the class & presented her vision for Streetlight & the challenges she faced
Students worked in teams, each coming up with their own ideas
Teams presented their action plans
Brown selected “the best”/most feasible
6 students continued to work as volunteers/interns
Note: one team did their own project: Impala Development Service, for which they won a $10,000 Projects for Peace grant
Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Challenges & Strategies to overcome
– Students:• length of semester• undergraduate students from multiple disciplines
– tried to leverage as advantage (interdisciplinary, bringing different perspectives to the table to complement each other)
– Community Organization (Streetlight):• nascent• lack of budget & resources
– again, tried to leverage as an advantage in that students could come up with a wide-range of ideas
Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Outcomes: now, 5 years later, Streetlight
has: 2 fulltime staff (Director & Assistant Director), 2 part-time
interns, 2 part-time CF project interns $125,000 budget for materials, supplies, travel, etc. 20-35 patients/day, ages 13-25 (550 “Frequent Flyer” patients
(Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease) 8 rooms on the designated “Streetlight” wing, 10 more under
construction 18 laptops, 25 videogame consoles, 1200 movies, 300
videogames, 600 CDs in Library 72 volunteers, 42 hours+/week of activities (3pm-9pm Monday –
Sunday), many events each week
Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolBiennial international competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Empowerhouse - A multi-disciplinary team: urban policy, organizational change management, and nonprofit management engineering, architecture and design.
Goals: real-world problem solving, think creatively, build collaboration and strategic alliances
http://www.newschool.edu/solar-decathlon/
Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolInnovation in Pedagogy
• New paradigm: affordable sustainable housing (innovative design, strategic partnerships providing pathway to scale)
• 11 courses over 2 years, 200 students
• Architecture, lighting, product design, community development, Fundraising, organization change management, finance, marketing
• Multiple partners: HUD, Habitat for Human, Stevens, Deanwood neighborhood groups
Solutions
Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolChallenges:
• Scheduling
• Cultural differences between disciplines and organizations
• Power issues
• Semester structure
Solutions
• Planning, team building, project management
Multi-disciplinary teams of students and faculty work with groups of indigenous artisans and professional designers in the developing world to
•support artisans in building sustainable craft-based income-generating opportunities.• create diverse immersive hands-on ‘real world’ learning opportunities for students and faculty across The New School
GOALS
exposing students to real life situations facilitates the storage and carriage of practical experiences into the future
PEDAGOGY
knowledge exchange
students and communities as experts and agents of change
sustainable developmentsocial entrepreneurshipbusinessmedia communication / documentationdesign of productsprogram development and project managementcommunity development modelsfacilitation in informal settings
PROTOTYPING
COURSE: Designing Collaborative Development
role-playing simulation: donors, NGO, community
prototyping:designing with communities in mind
project design:implementing theory into new models
workshop design:facilitating collaborative prototyping with community
COURSE: Designing Collaborative Development
Lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for university, NGO partner, local government, and community from day 1.
The rush to make tangible products sacrificed the long-term sustainability of a true collaboration. Lack of continuity with membership of community collaborators - with whom are we working?University team perceived as tourists or potential funders, not necessarily collaborators.
CHALLENGES:Collaboration
Lack of support for ongoing projects (institution looking for the “new” factor)
Course deliverables for diverse (levels and majors) classroom.
Difficult to find cross-university collaborators - faculty tend to want to lead or initiate.
Momentum fades throughout the year when focus is only on summer fieldwork.
CHALLENGES:University
Small Group Discussion
Share your practices
– Describe a course project that exemplifies university-community partnerships that create outcomes that are transformative for both communities & students
– ...or one that you are hoping to develop
Large Group Discussion
Refer to Ashoka's learning outcomes handout & to the examples you discussed in small group:
What was a particular learning/community outcome you were seeking to achieve?
What was a challenge you experienced?
How did you try to address it?
What educational innovations are needed to improve outcomes?
Key Take-Home Points
-develop ongoing partnerships between faculty & community organizations to teach social enterprise… time & effort to prepare these relationships
-help students to understand that the health/wellbeing of the community is connected to their own health/wellbeing
-teach students teambuilding tools in the classroom so they can model them when overcoming challenges while working in the community
-address issues about working with community partners openly… talk about it (race, cultural differences, socio-economic status, etc.)
-how to garner students’ enthusiasm for working in community & offer assistance in facilitating their work (so as not to risk what might happen if/when they try to do this work on their own).,. Institutional accountability (to avoid “service learning pollution”).