Purpose
Throughout the semester you have developed strengths and skills to be an effective leader in a variety of environments. You and your teammates have worked together to accomplish specific goals and put your newly acquired skills to use. The purpose of community development is to meet the needs of the community by using leadership skills to work with diverse backgrounds and people. You have been equipped with knowledge to lead positive change in real-world scenarios to serve the individuals around you. As you reflect on your service learning project and the experiences that came with it, think about what your team performed well, as well as, ways your team could have done things differently in order to better serve the community Additionally, discuss what skills you still need to work on in order to be an effective leader.
Plan a service learning experience within a team that addresses a felt need within the community.
Leverage the leadership talents and abilities of self and others to accomplish developmental goals.
Evaluate your effectiveness with leveraging the leadership talents and abilities of self and others to accomplish developmental goals in personal, organizational and communal contexts.
Task
After completing your 10 hours of volunteer service at your project site, reflect on your experience working with a community organization and write a paper on Using Service Learning to Improve the Community. Over the course of the semester, you have learned new leadership skills that should allow you to better serve your community and your teammates/peers. The paper should be at least 6 complete paragraphs and not longer than 7 pages (excluding title page and references). Proper grammar, spelling and use of APA formatting are assumed. If you would like help with either English language usage or APA format, please contact the TA or refer to the Purdue Online Writing Laboratory (OWL). Remember to cite references from the book, lecture, or your project site’s website/materials whenever possible/appropriate. There are six sections all successful papers must include: Introduction, Service Learning Site Overview, Service Learning Project Description, Your Responsibilities, Project Reflection, and Conclusion.
Criteria
The paper will be evaluated using the following criteria and points. Please check the assignment rubric on eLC, as well as, exemplar paper for this assignment before submitting your paper.
Introduction (0-3)
Introduce the idea of community development through service learning
Provide a thesis statement or your vision of for community leadership (think diversity, in-group/out-groups, social justice, and/or ethical leadership)
Overview of what you will discuss in the paper
Service Learning Site Overview (0-4)
Provide information on where your project took place (context and culture of site)
Explain why this site needed you or your team’s support
Include cited facts and statistics that prove support was needed
Service Learning Project Description
Overview of what your team or you did for the project
Explain how this project addressed the needs of the site as mentioned above
Why is this project significant/important to the health of the community?
Why was you or your team well-suited to assist in providing support at the site?
Introduce the three objectives that guided your project
Your Responsibilities
Discuss your contribution that assisted in meeting the 3 objectives (i.e., personal, team, and site) and how you demonstrated the 7 servant leader behaviors (conceptualizing, emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, behaving ethically, empowering, creating value for the community)
Discuss how you used concepts from transformational leadership, adaptive leadership, diversity and inclusion, social justice, and/or ethical leadership to contribute to your vision of community leadership
Include your service learning hours verification as an appendix; reference verification in the paper by using (see Appendix A).
Project Reflections
Explain what worked well with your project
Explain what could have been improved on (think about the Hill Model of Team Effectiveness from Lesson 7).
Include recommendations for moving forward.
Conclusion (0-3)
Review what you discussed and how you accomplished your thesis/your vision for communal leadership
Provide key takeaway(s) related to your approach to serving your community
Overall Structure (0-4)
Free of grammatical and spelling errors
Cites sources
Uses proper APA Formatting (e.g., title page, running header, reference list, in-text citations
