Service learning is a powerful mode of experiential learning. It is a proven way to build and demonstrate leadership and organizational skills in students and to develop responsible citizens. With thorough preparation and guided reflection, service-learning initiatives bring a transformative power that leads many students to point to these experiences as some of their most cherished college memories.
Current conversations around diversity and inclusion, racial justice, and the role of higher education in combating systemic racism and improving access to opportunities should inspire colleges to ask how they can design significant community-based learning programs. After all, volunteering in an underserved community can push privileged students to recognize and confront their privilege. Likewise, it empowers those student volunteers who come from underserved communities to support causes that greatly matter to them.
However, it is not easy to identify the right community partner and establish a robust working relationship between, say, a local elementary school, food bank, or homeless shelter and your institution of higher learning. The good news is that there is an organization that exists in many communities that is dedicated to developing young adults as leaders and understands that service learning means more than having your students put in a predetermined amount of volunteer hours to meet a course or work-study requirement.
The YMCA — nowadays more commonly known as the Y — can inspire students to realize their civic purpose, push them to explore issues of power and privilege, and create a guided and meaningful learning experience that emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Y has over 10,000 locations in the U.S., so there is a good chance your reliable community partner may be just a stone’s throw away from campus. Their staff are typically extremely well-connected with local nonprofits; they are trained and experienced in mentoring and empowering young adults to realize their civic purpose, and they have an intimate understanding of the needs of the community they are serving.
Some YMCAs are even exclusively dedicated to a specific university’s student population and may already be connected to the student affairs office. They often serve as a link between the campus and local nonprofits and have the students’ personal interests and career development in mind when they place them with community organizations.
Jenny Wright Collins, Executive Director of the University YMCA at the University of Minnesota (UM), explains: “We first build relationships with students to understand their interests and strengths. Then we bridge between campus and the community to meet needs on both sides. It is important that the students can address an unmet community need with our partners and learn something in the process.”
participates in Springfield College’s 2019 YMCA Home Building Project in the town of Don Gregorio in the Dominican
Republic. The project is one of several service-learning opportunities facilitated by the college and the YMCA.
Ebenezer Chinedu-Eneh, an African American medical student and former YMCA student mentor, feels deeply indebted to Collins and the University Y. “Some of my fondest college memories are related to the UM YMCA,” Chinedu-Eneh says.
During his undergraduate studies, Chinedu-Eneh taught science to first and second grade students in an afterschool program. “The students I worked with knew that I wanted to be a doctor. It allowed them to dream,” he says. “[That] is something I never had growing up.”
Springfield College (SC), a predominantly White institution in Massachusetts, has been partnering with the YMCA movement for 135 years and even offers a minor in YMCA Professional Studies, which prepares students for a career with the Y or similar community-based organizations. “We want to show students how they can make a difference in the world,” explains SC Vice President for Inclusion and Community Engagement Calvin Hill, PhD.
SC students volunteer in a YMCA after-school enrichment program that focuses on enhancing literacy and math skills for K-5 students. Bringing SC students together with diverse, local public school children is beneficial for both sides, according to Hill. “We understand that our White students have often not engaged cross-culturally,” he says.
The elementary school students come to the SC campus for the afterschool program rather than staying at their own school. Hill points out that “if young people can be a part of a campus and see themselves there, it is not outside of their comfort zone or their norm.” After all, a future first-generation student who gets to eat a meal in a college dining hall might have an easier time envisioning themselves on a university campus.
Similarly, when colleges partner with the YMCA for programs that focus on mentoring middle and high school students, this type of community outreach can become a powerful diversity recruitment tool. Once underrepresented or first-generation students have successfully enrolled, the Y can support a college’s retention efforts by setting up a peer-to-peer mentoring program for first-year students, such as in the successful Y Collegiate Achievers Program.
According to Hill, regardless of COVID-19 remote-learning situations across the country, now interests and strengths. Then we bridge between campus and the community to meet needs on both sides. It is important that the students can address an unmet community need with our partners and learn something in the process.”
Ebenezer Chinedu-Eneh, an African American medical student and former YMCA student mentor, feels deeply indebted to Collins and the University Y. “Some of my fondest college memories are related to the UM YMCA,” Chinedu-Eneh says.
During his undergraduate studies, Chinedu-Eneh taught science to first and second-grade students in an afterschool program. “The students I worked with knew that I wanted to be a doctor. It allowed them to dream,” he says. “[That] is something I never had growing up.”
Springfield College (SC), a predominantly White institution in Massachusetts, has been partnering with the YMCA movement for 135 years and even offers a minor in YMCA Professional Studies, which prepares students for a career with the Y or similar community-based organizations. “We want to show students how they can make a difference in the world,” explains SC Vice President for Inclusion and Community Engagement Calvin Hill, PhD.
SC students volunteer in a YMCA after-school enrichment program that focuses on enhancing literacy and math skills for K-5 students. Bringing SC students together with diverse, local public school children is beneficial for both sides, according to Hill. “We understand that our White students have often not engaged cross-culturally,” he says.
The elementary school students come to the SC campus for the afterschool program rather than staying at their own school. Hill points out that “if young people can be a part of a campus and see themselves there, it is not outside of their comfort zone or their norm.” After all, a future first-generation student who gets to eat a meal in a college dining hall might have an easier time envisioning themselves on a university campus.
Similarly, when colleges partner with the YMCA for programs that focus on mentoring middle and high school students, this type of community outreach can become a powerful diversity recruitment tool. Once underrepresented or first-generation students have successfully enrolled, the Y can support a college’s retention efforts by setting up a peer-to-peer mentoring program for first-year students, such as in the successful Y Collegiate Achievers Program.
According to Hill, regardless of COVID-19 remote-learning situations across the country, now is the time to design programs for when students can resume in-person community engagement. He also argues that colleges should continue to focus on how they can develop their students into active, responsible citizens during distance learning. “In this virtual world that might stay with us for a little while, we still have to show students what it means to think about others. If students can’t have a service-learning opportunity, they nevertheless need to think about what it means to do service.
Melina Gehring, PhD, is a coordinator for the Office of International Affairs at Stanford University and a board member of the Palo Alto Family YMCA. This article was published in our November 2020 issue.
