To help students understand how to use their voices to advocate for causes about which they care. 

To help students understand how nonprofit organizations effectively address issues of poverty, food insecurity, immigration, and disenfranchisement locally and globally. To help students experience and understand how farming works.

To have students go through an experience that mimics the multiple steps and importance of clear communication between parties necessary in planning and carrying out a service learning project.

Our classes do “The Beast” game as we prepare for our grade-wide service learning projects. This activity is one of the most complex problem solving initiatives we use. It builds on the foundations learned in previous activities and should come near the end of the course.

Author: Urban EdVenture Faculty

We work on communication and listening skills while designing and building simple objects. This helps us think about the power of words and how difficult it can be to get a message across to another person without it being lost in translation.

Author: Urban EdVenture Faculty

To identify the qualities students see in effective leaders and create a life-size picture of a good leader emphasizing the body parts that represent those qualities.

To have students identify the things that are important in their lives as a means of finding a “passion” or “passions” the class holds in common. Students will then identify causes that deal with an issue related to their shared passion. This will guide the teacher in selecting and promoting potential community partners for the Urban EdVenture Final Project.

To have students partner with a nonprofit organization to design and complete a service-learning project for that organization. 

Youth research and report back to the group about the nonprofit organizations that are serving their community and the many facets of community life that nonprofits are involved in.

Author: Urban EdVenture Faculty

Play matching games on teams to gain familiarity with terms associated with philanthropy.

Author: Urban EdVenture Faculty

Using different approaches, the group develops a working understanding of the definition of philanthropy.

Author: Urban EdVenture Faculty