Building Bridges Through Community Service Learning

This issue of the Capacity.org newsletter describes a collaborative process that took place between university students at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) and ten community organisations working toward developing a process called 'Community Service Learning' (CSL). CSL is defined as the integration of students into the community as part of the university education. One of the goals of this university-community linking project was for students to acquire new skills while meeting the needs of community organisations.

According to the article, once the university recognised the need for enhanced community partnerships, one of the key steps in the process was active listening. The students offered community groups the chance to voice their views on how to characterise a healthy, beneficial, long-term partnership with the university. The process included looking at: resources that could be shared; challenges that could be anticipated; details such as roles and responsibilities; and the degree of participation.

In the process, the authors describe a number of tools they used. The 'Insights Discovery Preference Evaluation Tool' was used to assess people's personalities and preferences. (The tool came from Insights Canada in Toronto, Canada). Another tool used (and modified for their purposes) was 'Visualisation in Participatory Programming' (VIPP) which helped the students in structuring large volumes of feedback. At this point, the students developed a participatory, democratic process in which to engage participants so that their views were interpreted properly.

Some of the lessons that came out of the process were recognising how differently people's expectations are at first; the need for an effective informal communication channel (instead of formal meetings); ensuring that all stakeholders felt empowered; and, most importantly, the need to ensure that honesty and trust are the cornerstone of the process.