Community Engagement (CE) Groups Partner with Local Organizations

By Shad Sommers-Dehaney, Community Outreach and Engagement Coordinator

It was an exciting and fruitful year for CSW’s Community Engagement (CE) program, a subset of the school’s PACE (Promoting Awareness and Community Engagement) curriculum. Each section of CE partnered with an organization in the community working towards equity, justice, and awareness in a variety of different fields.

At the start of the year, students had the opportunity to indicate their top areas of interest. The chosen causes were sustainability, food insecurity, access to mental health, health and wellness, access to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics) education, immigrant and refugee assistance, tutoring, and global exchange.

Next, PACE directors organized students into community group sections based on their demonstrated preferences. Within their sections, students learned about the history and background of their chosen areas of interest and delved into the nuances of the current landscape. From there, students met with community partners to discuss present challenges, brainstorm creative solutions, and determine how CSW students might best get involved. Here, we are pleased to report on some of the amazing work that has been done so far.

SUSTAINABILITY

One section of sustainability partnered with two local organizations: Sustainable Weston Action Group (SWAG) and Weston Plant Pollinator Alliance. SWAG’s mission is to amplify discussion and inspire effective action on sustainability issues in the town of Weston by focusing on awareness and education, leading community-based, pragmatic actions and collaborations, and also by encouraging and supporting municipal, business, and residential cooperation.

Weston Plant Pollinator Alliance collaborates with homeowners, schools, neighboring communities, local organizations, and the Town of Weston to protect native pollination systems critical to sustaining biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and maintaining the health of our natural ecosystems.

The other section of sustainability worked with Speak for the Trees Boston. Speak for the Trees’ mission is to improve the size and health of the urban tree canopy in Boston, with a focus on under-resourced and under-canopied neighborhoods. This is done by developing and co-creating projects at the community level (including free tree giveaways), partnering with local and national environmental organizations, advocating for updated municipal policies governing tree planting, and more.

The SWAG section deliberated and broke off into a few subgroups focusing on different topics within sustainability. One group focused on identification and removal of invasive plant species at Cat Rock Park. They cataloged the different varieties of invasive species and also mapped their locations within Cat Rock. Another group created and presented a successful plan to stakeholders on campus to add more native species of plants that support pollinators to the existing garden beds on campus. The final group worked to put together an art exhibit in Weston highlighting sustainability and environmental justice.

FOOD INSECURITY

One section of food insecurity partnered with both Lazarus House and Healthy Waltham. Lazarus House aims to provide what is needed most by families and individuals facing material poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity in the areas of shelter, clothing, food, advocacy, and community resources. In response, they help to provide emergency care, holistic programming, hope for a good future, and life skills to gain independence and sustain self-sufficiency.

Healthy Waltham works to alleviate health disparities that exist in the City of Waltham, CSW’s close neighbor, and to improve the health outcomes of the city’s most vulnerable residents. They do this through the development of programs that improve nutrition, encourage physical activity and increase access to healthy foods. Waltham is home to a high population of working poor, many of whom are service workers, low-income seniors, and recent immigrants from Central and South America, Uganda, and Haiti. The majority of Waltham Public School students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. These are the populations served by Healthy Waltham.

The other section of food insecurity worked with Food Link. Food Link is a community organization that rescues fresh food, alleviates hunger, and contributes to environmental sustainability.

The Lazarus House and Healthy Waltham group worked on several initiatives throughout the year. First, they engaged the CSW community by running a food drive to support Lazarus House. Throughout the ongoing drive, the section developed a competitive advisory challenge throughout

campus to incentivize the engagement. This creative and critical thinking resulted in the collection of 263 food items and over $100 in monetary donations. In addition to this, the section supported Healthy Waltham during its inaugural Healthy Waltham Day event in May by setting up, managing tents, and handing out information at Waltham’s Prospect Hill Park.

HEALTH & WELLNESS

The Health and Wellness section partnered with Team Verge. Team Verge Inclusive Athletics, Inc. is an inclusive running club for youth and young adults of all abilities, with and without special needs, dedicated to improving the health and lives of their participants by helping them to expand their limits in a fun, safe, team environment with the individual support and challenge they need for success and athletic, social, and personal growth. They remove the barriers that typically prevent participation and growth for those with challenges.

The group working with Team Verge approached different aspects of the organization introduced by the founder. Students broke off into three main groups focusing on awareness and advocacy, program expansion, and fundraising. The advocacy and awareness group attended a Team Verge practice to both document what practice looks like and interview families and coaches involved with the program. With this footage, the group created a promotional video that Team Verge can use to share their amazing work with potential participants and donors. The other side of the advocacy group created a sample website to build off Team Verge’s current design to streamline information and introduce more participation within the community. The program expansion participants researched and documented potential new locations and sites that Team Verge could utilize for upcoming seasons and presented it to their founder. The fundraising group created a proposal for a future fundraising event involving CSW and individuals outside of the community in support of Team Verge.

IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE ASSISTANCE

The Immigrant and Refugee Assistance group partnered with Africano Waltham. The mission of African Cultural Services (Africano) is to use a holistic approach to lift African immigrant youth and their families to succeed in life through provision of a safe space, education, mental health assistance, visual and performing arts, and cultural connections.

After multiple discussions with the director of the organization, the area of greatest need was marketing and promotional material. The class broke off into three separate groups to develop a pamphlet to describe the organization, what they do, and how others can get involved. Each group developed a pamphlet to present to Africano’s director, who offered feedback and selected her preferred design. Next, the group looked to improve Africano’s current website by streamlining the layout and updating some of the current functionalities.

ACCESS TO STEAM EDUCATION

This section partnered with Kids in Tech based out of Lowell. Kids in Tech strives to excite, educate, and empower children to acquire skills and confidence in technology through interactive after school programs. It was founded in 2016 in Lowell, MA to prepare disadvantaged kids with free, interactive after-school programs in computers and technology. Kids in Tech has proven effective, with over 90 percent of its participants reporting increased knowledge, skills, and interest in STEAM fields. After gaining more insight on the lesson plans and curriculum used at Kids in Tech, students began to plan and create lessons around relevant topics. Some students in the section were able to travel to a partner Kids in Tech school a few times throughout the three mods to deliver their lessons directly to the students. One group led a lesson on videography that was very engaging and exciting for both the CSW students and the Kids in Tech students. Other students that were not able to visit Kids in Tech presented their lesson plans to their class to receive feedback and see what would be viable for future in-person lessons.

TUTORING

The tutoring section worked with Learn To Be, a free online tutoring platform. Learn To Be brings free, 1-on-1, online tutoring to underserved youth around the United States. They aim to make the world a place where all kids have access to a great education — not just those whose families can afford one.

SPEAK FOR THE TREES

By Carly Haessler ’23

This year, my CE group worked with Speak for the Trees. In our class, taught by Jordan Clark ’05, we learned not only about sustainability, but we also focused on how we as volunteers can help a community or group without it turning into a form of colonization. We started the year off by learning about ourselves as leaders. We took personality quizzes and discussed the results as a group. This came in handy later when we broke up into smaller groups for our sub-projects. Next, we learned how to do community outreach without overstepping. Together, we looked at examples of programs designed with good intentions, but that ultimately had negative effects on the communities they were helping.

Later in the year, we educated ourselves on how tree disparity manifests itself in redlined neighborhoods. We also researched how systemic racism can affect an individual neighborhood’s tree density. Once we had completed this important background preparation, we were ready to meet with the organization.

In meeting with representatives from Speak for the Trees, we were able to learn more about their mission and discuss ways in which our CE group could be helpful. We then broke into groups and began to create projects to help promote tree health in Boston. My group decided to use social media as a way to spread awareness about the lack of tree density in many neighborhoods in Boston. Instead of making it about the negatives, we intentionally decided to focus on how people could care for and respect the trees that were already there.

In all, the CE program gave me very important real-life skills. It taught us about how to branch out and work with outside-of-school organizations and the responsibilities that go along with that. Through this course, I have been able to combine my interest in marketing and social media with my love for the environment. I have also learned about new innovative ways that people are working to help our environments and I am proud to be part of that research. This was a unique experience that you don’t see at most schools and I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to experience it.