Ashoka U exchange

February 26, 2011

Social Innovation with Communities: Integrating Social Entrepreneurship, Service Learning, and Civic Engagement

WORKSHOP:

Discussion Structure

Introduction

Three Stories

Small Group Discussion

Large Group Discussion

Key Take-Away Points

Presenters

Michele Kahane, Milano Management, The New School

Kristin Joos, Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, University of Florida

Cynthia Lawson, Parsons Design, The New School

Fabiola Berdiel, Graduate Program International Affairs, The New School

Context Setting Diverse models of university-community engagement: service

learning, civic engagement, social entrepreneurship

Emerging Vision: university as hubs for social innovation in communities, harnessing their creative and intellectual capacities in partnership with communities to innovatively & sustainably address the social, environmental, and economic challenges confronting society

A compelling case

Three StoriesStreetlight Program for Adolescent

Palliative Care- Kristin Joos

Solar Decathlon– Michele Kahane

Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Design– Cynthia Lawson & Fabiola Berdiel

Three Stories

Brief Description

Intended Learning Outcomes

Expected Community Outcomes

Challenges that presented themselves

Key Innovations in Pedagogy

Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Brief Description: Overview & Context

Honors Intro to Social Entrepreneurship course Spring 2006, 15 week semester, 25 students

Students from diverse disciplines

Nascent Social Venture, launching as program at local research hospital One staff (the director)

Budget of less than $5000

Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Goals (expected outcomes for students &

community)

Students Community involvement, systems thinking, strategic

planning, creativity given limited resources, building teams, and sense of purpose

Streetlight Co-create action plans for programming to address the

Director's stated needs & hopes

Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Innovations in Pedagogy

Brown visited the class & presented her vision for Streetlight & the challenges she faced

Students worked in teams, each coming up with their own ideas

Teams presented their action plans

Brown selected “the best”/most feasible

6 students continued to work as volunteers/interns

Note: one team did their own project: Impala Development Service, for which they won a $10,000 Projects for Peace grant

Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Challenges & Strategies to overcome

– Students:• length of semester• undergraduate students from multiple disciplines

– tried to leverage as advantage (interdisciplinary, bringing different perspectives to the table to complement each other)

– Community Organization (Streetlight):• nascent• lack of budget & resources

– again, tried to leverage as an advantage in that students could come up with a wide-range of ideas

Streetlight: Adolescent Palliative Care Outcomes: now, 5 years later, Streetlight

has: 2 fulltime staff (Director & Assistant Director), 2 part-time

interns, 2 part-time CF project interns $125,000 budget for materials, supplies, travel, etc. 20-35 patients/day, ages 13-25 (550 “Frequent Flyer” patients

(Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease) 8 rooms on the designated “Streetlight” wing, 10 more under

construction 18 laptops, 25 videogame consoles, 1200 movies, 300

videogames, 600 CDs in Library 72 volunteers, 42 hours+/week of activities (3pm-9pm Monday –

Sunday), many events each week

Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolBiennial international competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Empowerhouse - A multi-disciplinary team: urban policy, organizational change management, and nonprofit management engineering, architecture and design.

Goals: real-world problem solving, think creatively, build collaboration and strategic alliances

http://www.newschool.edu/solar-decathlon/

Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolInnovation in Pedagogy

• New paradigm: affordable sustainable housing (innovative design, strategic partnerships providing pathway to scale)

• 11 courses over 2 years, 200 students

• Architecture, lighting, product design, community development, Fundraising, organization change management, finance, marketing

• Multiple partners: HUD, Habitat for Human, Stevens, Deanwood neighborhood groups

Solutions

Solar Decathlon at the New SchoolChallenges:

• Scheduling

• Cultural differences between disciplines and organizations

• Power issues

• Semester structure

Solutions

• Planning, team building, project management

DEVELOPMENT

EMPOWERMENT

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

DESIGN

Multi-disciplinary teams of students and faculty work with groups of indigenous artisans and professional designers in the developing world to

•support artisans in building sustainable craft-based income-generating opportunities.• create diverse immersive hands-on ‘real world’ learning opportunities for students and faculty across The New School

GOALS

exposing students to real life situations facilitates the storage and carriage of practical experiences into the future

PEDAGOGY

knowledge exchange

students and communities as experts and agents of change

multidisciplinary

undergraduate

graduatediversity

COURSE: Designing Collaborative Development

sustainable developmentsocial entrepreneurshipbusinessmedia communication / documentationdesign of productsprogram development and project managementcommunity development modelsfacilitation in informal settings

PROTOTYPING

COURSE: Designing Collaborative Development

role-playing simulation: donors, NGO, community

prototyping:designing with communities in mind

project design:implementing theory into new models

workshop design:facilitating collaborative prototyping with community

COURSE: Designing Collaborative Development

Lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for university, NGO partner, local government, and community from day 1.

The rush to make tangible products sacrificed the long-term sustainability of a true collaboration. Lack of continuity with membership of community collaborators - with whom are we working?University team perceived as tourists or potential funders, not necessarily collaborators.

CHALLENGES:Collaboration

Lack of support for ongoing projects (institution looking for the “new” factor)

Course deliverables for diverse (levels and majors) classroom.

Difficult to find cross-university collaborators - faculty tend to want to lead or initiate.

Momentum fades throughout the year when focus is only on summer fieldwork.

CHALLENGES:University

Small Group Discussion

Share your practices

– Describe a course project that exemplifies university-community partnerships that create outcomes that are transformative for both communities & students

– ...or one that you are hoping to develop

Large Group Discussion

Refer to Ashoka's learning outcomes handout & to the examples you discussed in small group:

What was a particular learning/community outcome you were seeking to achieve?

What was a challenge you experienced?

How did you try to address it?

What educational innovations are needed to improve outcomes?

Key Take-Home Points

-develop ongoing partnerships between faculty & community organizations to teach social enterprise… time & effort to prepare these relationships

-help students to understand that the health/wellbeing of the community is connected to their own health/wellbeing

-teach students teambuilding tools in the classroom so they can model them when overcoming challenges while working in the community

-address issues about working with community partners openly… talk about it (race, cultural differences, socio-economic status, etc.)

-how to garner students’ enthusiasm for working in community & offer assistance in facilitating their work (so as not to risk what might happen if/when they try to do this work on their own).,. Institutional accountability (to avoid “service learning pollution”).

Contacts

Michele Kahane kahanem@newschool.edu

Kristin Joos kristin.joos@warrington.ufl.edu

Cynthia Lawson lawsonc@newschool.edu

Fabiola Berdiel berdielf@newschool.edu

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