A northwestern metropolitan university embarked on a three-year project to assist residents of an at-risk neighborhood to revitalize that community. The goals of this project are to improve access to available human services, increase crime prevention activities among youth,and to expand the capacity for community organization. This is supported in part by a Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Over the last two years groups of senior community health nursing students have worked collaboratively with local residents, agencies and other university students. The students along with their partners, conducted comprehensive health assessments, planned, implemented and evaluated projects designed to reduce the incidence of unsupervised children in the area. Additionally they designed interventions to improve access to health care and provided services focused on developing healthy lifestyles for school-age youth. This presentation will include a discussion of service-learning as a strategy to enhance academic and service partnerships, challenges involved in conducting service-learning activities in community agencies with multiple partners, and finally, present strategies for evaluation.
Learning Objectives: the the end ofthis presentation the participant will be able to describe strategies to evaluated service-learning activities with community agencies. Discuss a partnership between education and community agencies to increase crime prevention activities in an at-risk neighborhood.
Keywords: Community-Based Partnership, Students
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.