Maurice R. Robinson Mini-Grant Program -- Service Learning, Community Service, Funding, sample projects

Maurice R. Robinson Mini-Grants
Teaching About Communities, Problems, and Change

2004-2005 Recipients

Civic Engagement

Community Unification Calendar Project
Nestucca Valley Development Council, Cloverdale, Oregon
Project Goal: Develop a community calendar to encourage unity. In an effort to coalesce communities, we will create a monthly calendar highlighting the events of schools, businesses, clubs, and organizations.
Contact: Amy Stricklin, Stanley Young, (503) 392-6101, nvdc@nestucca.k12.or.us

The VolunTEEN Program
Volunteer Center of Rhode Island, Warwick, Rhode Island
Program goal: Engage young citizens in active civic participation, community involvement, and applied learning through the medium of volunteer service. The Youth Governing Council will appoint youth committees to complete needs assessments in several areas of service including: Education, Environment, Public Safety, Human Needs and Civics. Upon completing these assessments, the committees will design service projects and present their solutions to the Youth Governing Council for approval. The approved projects will be performed throughout the school year.
Contact: Richard J. Andreano, (401) 463-3911, randreano@vcri.org, www.vcri.org, www.warwickri.gov

Civic Responsibility: Preserving the Past for the Future
Annunciation School, Denver, Colorado
Project Goal: Preserving a community building for the future. The building in need of restoration currently houses a food and clothing bank, health referral agency, and youth programming. Through collaboration between at-risk inner-city students, the elderly, and community organizations this project will serve as a catalyst for community building. In addition to preservation, the students will be responsible for producing a historical brochure about the site and collection of oral histories from community elders.
Contact: Michelle Pearson, (303) 295-2515, KPear12@aol.com

Mentoring Children and Youth

Writing Rocks!
Bethune Academy, Haines City, Florida
Program goal: Students enhance their reading and writing skills by mentoring younger students. Fifth-graders will receive creative writing instruction then create their own read-aloud stories and audio books complete with music and sound effects. They will deliver both versions of the book the local HeadStart center, where they will read their stories aloud to the pre-school students and present them with a library of audio tapes.
Contact: Jessica Fredricks, (863) 421-3334, jessica.fredricks@polk-fl.net

Days of Summer Fun--Youth Empowerment Camp
Progressive Youth Connection, Saint Louis, Missouri
Project goal: Develop leadership abilities and to teach important life skills. During this 2-week day camp, elementary school students will participate in many exciting violence-prevention and character education activities designed and led by high school members of the service learning group APAL (Advocates for Positive Attitudes and Lifestyles).
Contact: Mary Peterson, MSW, LCSW, Director of Clinical Volunteers, (314) 963-8368, marypyc@aol.com , www.pyconline.com

The Compass Project
Wescott Middle School, Portland, Maine
Project Goal: Improve life skills while encouraging community building. Eight at-risk youth students will build a 21-foot Beachcomber Dory boat. The students will also establish The Community Rowing Program to ensure sustainability and create opportunities for broader community participation.
Contact: Patricia Ryan, Executive Director, (207) 828-5289/749-8385, pryan2@maine.rr.com, www.compassproject.org

Making the Book: Literacy Mentoring Project
Isable Elementary School, Jackson, Mississippi
Program goal: Provide a mentoring project where older students research the literacy needs of younger students. Students in grades three through five will design age appropriate personalized books for younger students with digital pictures of the younger students and their classmates. They will also create hands-on games to accompany the books and a brochure about the importance of reading at home.

Kid Power Neighborhood Project
Kid Power-DC, Inc., Washington, DC
Project Goal: Mentor at-risk students in arts related activities. Each week, at-risk elementary school students will investigate a different aspect of their community through research while their high school mentors design an advanced art activity that draws upon the younger students' work. Activities will utilyse theater, filmmaking, and creative writing helping the younger students gain a deeper understanding of the past and learn to actively engage in their community's futurewhile their mentors learn the complexity of program design and youth work with diverse populations.
Contact: Max Skolnik, Executive Director, (202) 554-6070, max@kidpowerdc.org, www.kidpowerdc.org

Teens Teaching Tots
John Burroughs High School, Burbank, California
Project Goal: Students will write and illustrate children's books about environmental issues, like pollution, conservation and recycling. Utilysing elements of design learned in their Art Structure classes, students will design and publish childrens books. They will than visit local elementary schools where the books will be read followed by discussions about the environment. Books will be donated to the schools for future reading.
Contact: Dena Williams, (818) 558-4777 x6201, williams.dena@burbankusd.org

Hunger

Rainshadow Community Farm
Rainshadow Community Charter High School, Reno, Nevada
Project goal: Creation of a community garden to combat hunger. This year, students will address the problem of hunger in our neighborhood by creating community gardens where residents will be able to work with the Rainshadow "experts" to grow their own food. The school will work with city and county entities to locate vacant properties that can be used for the development of these gardens. Students will be taught important language skills, and will learn to colaborate with governmental agencies.
Contact: Carol White, (775) 322-5566, carol@rainshadowcchs.org

March Madness Food Drive
South Burlington High School, South Burlington, Vermont
Program Goal: Develop awareness and response to commnunity hunger. March Madness will be a countywide food drive for the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. Students will work with community members to develop advertising, storage space, and participation incentives. Students will also examine the structural causes of hunger, homelessness, and poverty in their classes.

Catering for a Good Cause
Decatur Christian School, Decatur, Illinois
Project Goal: Students in cooking class will plan and prepare meals for residents of a homeless shelter. Sixteen students in the Decatur School cooking class will cook two meals for the Good Samaritan Inn, which feeds homeless men and women. Students will also prepare meals for New Generation Torchbearers, a Friday-evening club for at-risk youth. Through this project, students will learn menu planning cooking techniques, portion and purchasing decision making, and health-safe cooking rules.
Contact: Marilyn Kok, (217) 423-4307, marilynkok@juno.com, http://www.decaturchristian.net/dcs/

Environment

Water Quality Testing Project
Graham Elementary School, Auburn Hills, Michigan
Program goal: Further community awareness of the importance of the major waterway in our city. Fourth grade students will mentor second graders in a study of water pollution and water quality. Our project will include a study of ways students and their families can recycle products, monitoring water usage at home, and learning how to prevent common types of water pollution. Our project will culminate with a field trip to the Clinton River near our school.
Contact: Judith Johnson, (248) 332-5454, www.avondale.k12.mi.us/

Students as Citizens: Local Watershed Monitoring
Blacksburg Middle School, Blacksburg, Virginia
Project Goal:Working with local experts, students will learn methods to assess areas for potential environmental problems. They will then teach their peers techniques to identifiy areas of public concern within their watershed. Finally, student planners will develop a public website devoted to providing access to raw data, statistics, and conclusions as well as resources for developing similar programs in other areas. Outreach will include a field trip to a local elementary school and a presentation of findings to Blacksburg Town Council.
Contact: Mark Freeman, (540) 951-5800, mfreeman@mcps.org, www.mcps.org/bms, www.mcps.org/bms/sixth/fristler

Kids Take Action
Long Island Hebrew Academy, Great Neck, New York
Program goal: Design and implement a community recycling program applying principles of science and mathematics. Students research environmental issues using print and internet resources. "Corey's Web: Down In The Dumps," a book about illegal dumping is read to fully understand the impact of environmental pollution on community life. Students will work together to design a recycling program customized to their community needs, exploring what items can be recycled quickly, easily, and have the greatest impact on the local environment.

Feed the Earth
Carson Elementary, Denver, Colorado
Program goal: Provide experiential, environmental, and scientific learning while improving school property. On a daily basis, students will collect appropriate garbage and compost it with other elements to create composted soil for the new landscape community members and parents recently planted around the school. With the help of community volunteers and parents, the students will learn about soil structure, compost management, the science of food and its chemical makeup, climate impact and landscaping.
Contact: Kerry Santambrogio, (303) 973-4824, Kerry_Ssntambrogio@dpsk12.org

Courtyard Project
Carlisle FCCLA, Carlisle, Iowa
Project Goal: Improve campus environment utilizing school resources. We plan to construct a courtyard between two buildings on the junior high-high school campus. Our plan includes sculptures made by the arts department, an amphitheater made by the woods and metals classes, lighting by the electricity class, flowers and grounds by the science department, a blueprint done by housing, and meaningful poems and quotes by the English classes.

Earth Force in the Neighborhood
Lake Erie-Allegheny Earth Force, Erie, Pensylvania
Project Goal: Provide opportunities for young people to practice civic skills and develop environmental awareness. Earth Force in the Neighborhood is a community-based program that promotes civic engagement one block at a time. Small groups of youth meet once a week with facilitators in order to implement the CAPS (Community Action and Problem Solving) 6-step process in order to identify and react to community environmental issues.

Highland Park Beautiful Campaign
Hathaway Family Resource Center, Los Angeles, California
Project goal: Engage youth to actively participant in the enhancement of their community. The Hathaway Youth Leadership Council will promote an essay contest that asks youth to think about roles they can play in enhancing their neighorhoods. This contest will be followed by a day of planting and gardening at Luther Burbank Middle School.
Contact: Tessa Charnofsky, (323) 257-9600, tcharnofsky@hathawaychildren.org, www.Hathawaychildren.org

Aging

YES! Youth Engaged in Service with Seniors
Newtown Youth Service, Inc., Sandy Hook, Connecticut
Program goal: Enhance youth connection to their community and increase the web of support services available for local senior citizens. YES! is an intergenerational service-learning project connecting youth and senior citizens through a combination of oral history interviews and a homeland security project mapping project. The oral history interviews will record stories about American home life, the impact of major historical events, and the ways in which communities prepared themselves for emergency situations in the past.
Contact: Nina Allred, (203) 270-4335, Prevention Services, nosuds123@sbcglobal.net, www.newtownyouthservices.org

Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service Project
Salt Lake City Foundation/Youth City Gov't, Salt Lake City, Utah
Project goal: Students gain an understanding of how individuals create change through dialogue and service. Students will collect oral histories from individuals who participated in the civil rights movement. These stories will be shared with the community in a display at the City & County Building in downtown Salt Lake City. The students will also host a peer-led inter-school forum to discuss issues of diversity, community service, and the role of youth as agents of change in their communities and schools.

Photo Voice - Bridging Generations and Cultures
Washington School, Lowell, Massachusetts
Program goal: Practice new skills in a way that will build strong bonds and mutual respect between two generations. Fifty-five grade four students from diverse cultural backgrounds will develop a relationship with our city's senior citizens by corresponding with them and visiting them at their place of residence to conduct interviews. The students will write a biography and shoot a photo essay of a senior. The resulting work will be exhibited at the school, Senior Center and other local agencies and galleries.
Contact: Leslie Macphail, 978 937 7635, lmacphail@lowell.k12.ma.us, was.lowell.smartedu.net

Tolerance

The Student Voice
Youth Volunteer Corps of Warren County, Warren, Pennsylvania
Project goal: Provide a student led news source for the community. The Student Voice, a countywide student newspaper, will be written by and for Warren County students in grades 7-12, published quarterly and distributed free of charge in homerooms. Career-ed and work standards will be addressed, as professionals from the community will mentor students and field trips to educational institutions and relevant workplaces are planned for the editorial staff.
Contact: Terry Williams, YVC Director, (814) 723-7849, yvc@westpa.net, www.youthvolunteercorps.org

Peacewords Heroes
Immaculate Conception School, Jamaica Estates, New York
Project Goal: Create a children's book about a successful peacemaker. In partnership with Richmond Hill Historical Society, students will study the photojournalist Jacob Riis, who brought public awareness to social problems in 19th century New York City. The students' will than write, publish, and promote a children's book that educates the public about this successful peacemaker. During the spring term, students will design a service-learning project that will utilize photography to address a critical need in their community followed by an international exchange with a Peacewords Heroes team in Italy in the Summer.
Contact: Kathleen Stelling, 718 739-5933, cetus@mindspring.com, http://icsalumni.org/

Crime and Safety Issues

Grim Reaper- Back for More
Chautauqua County Schools, Sedan, Kansas
Project Goal: Prevent underage drinking and driving. One student will be removed from the classroom every 15 minutes for one day. There will be an accident and arrest simulation, and "student fatalities" will be isolated from parents for a day and a night. They will be reunited the following day at a "funeral" assembly that includes reading the last letters of both fatalities and parents. Law enforcement, legislators, and survivors of alcohol related accidents will be key speakers at the funeral.
Contact: Linda Fadely, (620) 725-2221, lindafa@usd286-sedan-ks.org, www.usd286-sedan-ks.org

Pupil's Perceptions
Miami Douglas MacArthur Senior High - South, Miami, Florida
Project goal: Design and implement arts projects for the community. Together with ArtSouth artists students will study an intensive arts curriculum in order to plan and implement community art projects for display at public festivals, offices, parks, and homes.

Bully-Free Kid Zone
Columbia Elementary School, Kings Mills, Ohio
Program goal: Address the safety and security issues of students in public schools. Students will write and illustrate children's literature addressing bullying. These books along with multimedia presentations will be presented to various classrooms in a neighboring elementary school as well as the students' school. Students will produce a documentary on bullying to share with students in various classrooms throughout the district.
Contact: Dr. Tracy Alley, (513) 398-8050x13016, talley@kingslocal.k12.oh.us

Health

Fishing for Facts
Denmark-Olar School District, Denmark, South Carolina
Project Goal: A community event to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS and other health issues. We will plan and organize the event with informational booths and presentations focusing on HIV/AIDS in addition to diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol. The event will include confidential screenings for each of these health concerns.

Return to Robinson Mini-Grant Main Page

For more additional information please contact, Katie Moore, Robinson Mini-Grant Program, Constitutional Rights Foundation, 601 South Kingsley Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90005, (213) 316-2104, Fax (213) 386-0459.