Creating a roadmap to civic engagement
Abstract
Many young people are looking for opportunities to improve the communities in which they live. The Roadmap to Civic Engagement, created by the Washington Service Corps in collaboration with Service-Learning Northwest, is a seven-unit curriculum that uses the vehicle of service-learning to help participants develop a personal understanding of the behaviors, attitudes, and actions that help define civic engagement. The long-term goal is that young adults will demonstrate a higher degree of civic engagement as they reach maturity. The course is designed to be introduced first to AmeriCorps members, who in turn teach the principles to youth serving organizations. Nancy Pringle, Director of the Corps, submitted this effective practice in February 2005.Issue
Young people have become increasingly disconnected from their communities and civic duties. While institutions across the nation are seeking solutions, national service programs in particular have already demonstrated their access to young adults and an organizational focus on service and community involvement. Beginning in 2003, all AmeriCorps programs were instructed to include training for their members on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.Action
According to Nancy Pringle of the Washington Service Corps, a Roadmap to Civic Engagement is a fully customized seven-unit program comprised of civic engagement materials for middle school youth.- Units are designed for a 90 minutes learning/activity session to take place once a week for optimum effectiveness.
- Each unit is laid out so that it can be divided into separate 45-minute sessions.
- A central component of the Roadmap asks participants to identify, design, and implement a service-learning project that engages them in meeting genuine community needs.
- Activities that help build team and community identity, as well as introduce and reinforce the lesson. These essential activities focus participants' attention on the unit's objectives and also set the stage for reflection.
- Lessons that involve discussion and exploration; some include activities that focus on an issue relevant to the session topic.
- A reflection component that comprises a variety of activities and forms, including journals, artwork, group sharing and other appropriate contemplation activities that are used to reinforce the lesson.
- Road signs, which serve as hints and clues that will help direct activities during the course of the curriculum.
Unit One
Begins with a focus on "community," helping participants understand how the concepts of safety and common needs play into the development of a community.
Units Two and Three (The Importance of Place)
Participants deepen their connection with their own community, exploring the history of their community to learn more about how communities originate and change over time. Participants will try to answer the question, "What assets make your community valuable or meaningful?" as they begin to develop community asset maps. Participants will attempt to understand the life of their community in a broader historical context. Inviting a guest speaker to talk about the history of the local community and focusing on a couple of key points or events, enriches and rounds out these units. Participants will also gain an understanding of how rules provide a community structure that allows for the attainment of goals, to understand the people and organizations behind a given rule or law, and to understand laws and policies as part of a system that individuals have the ability to change.
Unit Four
Participants are taught that behind civic engagement issues, causes or situations, are universal human needs. Participants begin to develop a "needs vocabulary." In addition, they will create a continuum of local to global issues of concern, and learn to link these issues back to universal needs.
Units Five and Six
Participants will receive reinforcement that one person can make a difference. Drawing on historical examples, participants will discover a rich heritage around the roots of citizen voice and democracy. They will learn more about democratic voting, consensus decision-making, and moving from community needs to solution-oriented actions by planning a service project to address a chosen genuine need.
Unit Seven
Structured reflection activities, and participation in a formal celebration where accomplishments can be recognized and acknowledged.
Exploratory Service Activities
These one-time service activities help expose participants to various opportunities in the community that meet a variety of community needs. Exploratory project ideas are divided into the service focus areas of social justice, the environment, and human service.
Social justice project ideas include the following:
- Food bank
- Media literacy
- Homeless shelter
- Domestic violence
- Peace
- Gun control, gun safety
- Bullying
- Computer literacy
- Digital divide
- Trail maintenance
- Recycling
- Watershed
- Computer recycling
- Invasive plant removal
- Tree planting
- Stream cleaning
- Energy audit for homes, schools, or businesses
- Mentoring
- Day care center
- Book drive
- Elder home care/repair
- Nursing home visit
- Toy drive
- Bicycle repair clinic
- Single parent support/babysitting, home repair
Context
The Roadmap program came about in response to growing evidence and concern that youth were disassociated from the communities in which they lived, and the issues that are important to democratic ideals. Washington Service Corps (WSC) entered into a partnership with Service-Learning Northwest to develop the Roadmap to Civic Engagement curriculum. During the 2002-2003 program year WSC piloted the Roadmap to Civic Engagement throughout their organization. Utilizing a cross-age tutoring structure in which members first experienced the program and then facilitated it with youth, allowed WSC to reinforce the training for the AmeriCorps members and to extend the reach of civic education to include hundreds of youth.
For the implementation of a Roadmap to Civic Engagement, WSC developed a program structure to allow more than 800 AmeriCorps members to civically engage up to 1,000 young people in projects based on a service-learning methodology. Twenty-two project sites partnered with local community nonprofit and faith-based youth-serving organizations to deliver the curriculum throughout the state of Washington. After an assessment of the pilot program year, the curriculum was revised to address the stated needs and concerns. Revisions included cutting the number of units from fourteen to seven.
The Roadmap Manual (for facilitators) is written in a structured, straightforward, and detailed manner so that novices and skilled facilitators alike will have what they need to successfully lead participants through the program. Additionally, workshops are held nationally to train those who will share the information with members.
Established in 1983, Washington Service Corps is one of the largest AmeriCorps sponsoring agencies in the United States and has received AmeriCorps funding since 1993. Nationally recognized as a leader in the national service field, WSC delivers needed services to Washington's residents and implements innovative programs exhibiting the potential to improve the civic atmosphere in the state's communities.
Citation
Fletch, Larry, Jennifer Springsteen and Becky Brown-Winkels, Roadmap to Civic Engagement, (Manual Summary). Vancouver, Washington: Service-Learning Northwest: Educational Service District 112, 2003.
Service-Learning Northwest is a program of Educational Service District 112 in Vancouver, Washington and is funded in part through grants from Learn and Serve America and through grants administered through the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The Manual Summary is based upon work supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service under Learn and Serve America Grant No. 00LSHWA014. Opinions or points of view in the document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Corporation or the Learn and Serve America Program.
Outcome
Evidence
To assess the efficacy of the 2003-2004 Roadmap, WSC contracted with Abt Associates Inc., an independent research organization recognized as a leader in national and community service research.
As part of this evaluation, an Abt evaluator visited six of the AmeriCorps project sites participating in the Roadmap. Other data sources for the evaluation included: focus groups with members, mail surveys of project site supervisors and representatives of youth-serving organizations, as well as self-administered surveys completed by members and youth once they had concluded the Roadmap. Member focus groups collected information related to the impact the curriculum had on members' overall service experience. The mail surveys were designed to capture characteristics of the organizations involved with the Roadmap, while also providing these stakeholders the opportunity to provide feedback on their overall experience with the curriculum. The survey of youth and member participants measured their progress on several of the attitudes and behaviors the Roadmap was designed to positively affect. During the data collection process, several notable findings about the positive effects of the Roadmap were identified, including the following: (See full report for all findings.)
- The surveys administered to youth and members after completion of the curriculum indicate that participants' civic knowledge, civic attitudes, and civic actions were significantly enhanced through their participation in the Roadmap.
- A majority (59 percent) of youth-serving organizations reported that the Roadmap enhanced the civic engagement and community awareness of participants.
- Nearly 80 percent of project site supervisors reported being satisfied with the training and orientation their organization received prior to Roadmap implementation.
- Eighty-nine percent of project site supervisors stated that the shorter curriculum (7 units as compared to the 14 unit pilot curriculum) contributed to a more positive Roadmap experience for their members.
- The majority of members stated that the Roadmap was a positive addition to their AmeriCorps experience. Among the benefits cited by this group were the opportunity to work with a group of youth outside of their host site and the team building that occurred during implementation and facilitation.
- The youngest AmeriCorps members (those under the age of twenty-two) reported significantly higher increases in their civic knowledge, civic attitudes, and civic actions than their older counterparts.
- For nearly half of members (47 percent) the civic knowledge construct reflected the largest increase in scores.
- Sixty-six percent of project site supervisors reported that if given the choice, they would participate in a subsequent iteration of the Roadmap.
- When asked to assess the difficulty of integrating the Roadmap into their existing service structure, 74 percent of youth-serving organizations described this process as either a little or not at all difficult.
- An overwhelming majority (89 percent) of respondents to the youth-serving organizations survey stated that they would participate in a subsequent iteration of the curriculum.
Posted On
March 29, 2005For More Information
Resources
To download the complete curricula, see the EnCorps page at http://encorps.nationalserviceresources.org/resources/active_citizenship/roadmap_to_civic_engagement.php.