CESP Blog

Sometimes it feels like there is more than a road dividing the University of Minnesota from the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. My sense was confirmed as we went around the group of students to ask what brought them to this RAP session. Most of the students expressed an interest/curiosity in the neighborhood but just haven’t taken the time to explore. How is it possible that most students can identify the restaurants, stores and other assets of Dinkytown or Stadium Village but have very little sense of the community just across the street from the West Bank Arts Quarter, Carlson School of Management, and the Humphrey Institute? How have U of M students, staff and faculty been acculturated to understanding our bordering communities? Is there a difference in the imagery, language, and marketing that you see for Dinkytown, Stadium Village, and Prospect Park, versus Cedar Riverside?

Reflection Questions
One of the most important aspects of CHANCE is that it is tied to a place. It is intentional that our partnerships and work are tied to the neighborhood where Humphrey is located. Thinking of your own community experience: What draws you to the place where you do your community work? Does it matter that the organization you work with is based in a particular neighborhood? Is it a conscious choice for you to work in that neighborhood? Is it a conscious choice that the organization works in that neighborhood? Do you participate in the neighborhood beyond that community work with an organization? If your relationship with the neighborhood goes beyond your community work, how does that impact your experience?

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a summary with how it went, what you learned, etc in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Hope you all enjoyed the RAP session and come to some more next fall!

Posted by reut0076 at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Imagine working full-time for minimum wage with no benefits and not being able to afford to pay your rent. Imagine paying a damage deposit and first and last months rent on a home and two months later being evicted because the owner of the home had been foreclosed upon. In this RAP session we participated in a dialogue about some of the many complicated issues facing individuals and families in the Twin Cities homeless population.

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a summary with how it went, what you learned, etc in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Hope you all enjoyed the RAP session and come to some more, the next is A CHANCE Tour of the Cedar-Riverside Neighborhood on Friday, April 24th from 10am-12pm at Cedar-Riverside Neighborhood. Sign up at www.servicelearning.umn.edu/trainings!

Posted by reut0076 at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Helping people help themselves is the philosophy in which guides Project for Pride in Living (PPL). This nonprofit agency works with lower-income families and individuals in numerous ways such as housing assistance, employment training, education resources, and family support services. With these services PPL encourages people to become self-sufficient and achieve stability with their housing, finances, and family. PPL also coordinates the College House Program, a tutor and mentoring program which serves the needs of children directly from the community. All the individuals who live in these houses tutor two children and serve as healthy adult role models. For this RAP session we visited PPL’s various programs in the Seward Neighborhood, meet with students living in the College House, and discussed how the work of PPL addresses community issues present in all of our community work.

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a summary with how it went, what you learned, or respond to the following question in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

What are some things that you learned about "helping people help themselves" that are useful for you in your community work at other Twin Cities organizations?

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Hope you all enjoyed the RAP session and come to some more, the next is Housing and Homelessness in the Twin Cities on Thursday, April 16th from 2-4pm at CSOM 1-122. Sign up at www.servicelearning.umn.edu/trainings!

Posted by reut0076 at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The word, "grant" tends to represent a big and scary document that any undergraduate student would feel nervous about approaching, but there are a variety of grants and key elements that can increase the success of a grant. This session was a hands-on approach to researching for grants, as well as writing them, so bring your past community work experiences to the table because you could find them very useful during the grant finding/writing process. There was also some discussion about other fund-raising methods which can be found if we "think outside the box."

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a summary with how it went, what you learned, or respond to the following questions in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

Questions to comment on from Samone!
If you plan on writing a grant in the future, what factors will affect your
grant writing/searching process the most?

After the session, what kind of grants (federal, state, mini-grants,
community) interested you the most and why?

helpful websites:
http://www.technologygrantnews.com
http://www.uncg.edu/soe/trc/docs/Grantwebsites.pdf

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Posted by reut0076 at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)