New Community Partner: A Woman's Place

I just got back from a meeting with Deb and Danyale at A Woman's Place (Urbana). What wonderful women, and what a great service they are providing to our community. Their vision now is to better serve their Spanish-speaking residents, and with the help of our Spanish community service learning students I think that they can make strides in that direction.

In a previous post I wrote about their organization's need to help two of their current Spanish-speaking residents. They weren't full-fledged community partners at that point, but I put the call out to our students to see who could help.

Today they told me that they were extremely pleased about all the e-mails they received and the students' willingness to help them out with whatever they needed. (Thank you, students!)

Today's meeting, then, was to set up a community partnership so that our Spanish community service learning students can work with them on a consistent basis every semester. Whenever they have Spanish-speaking residents, then the students can work with the case managers to open communication and help with the children. These are the other projects they have in mind for students to work on if there are no Spanish-speaking residents at the time:

  • Translating their documents.
  • Putting signs in Spanish up around the facilities.
  • Community outreach--going to plants and churches in the community to inform the community of their existence and services.
  • Helping residents with life skills (e.g., resume writing, e-mail, basic computer literacy, etc.)
  • Creating videos in Spanish to welcome new residents, inform them, and help them through the necessary documentation.
If the basis of a solid community service learning program is mutually beneficial community partnerships, I feel that this is a very important partnership for Spanish & Illinois. A Woman's Place will be able to fill a need within the local Latino community, and my students will have an enriching and supportive learning environment. Creating these powerful partnerships is one of the highlights of my job.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vocabulary for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Image
I'm very happy that so many students responded to our community partner's need for help. Our students' language skills will help Central High School's Latino parents better communicate with the teachers during the parent-teacher conferences next week. Central's secretary will contact the students directly to schedule times with them. Here is some vocabulary help for students. Materias. School subjects are "materias" NOT "sujetos." You should remember subjects from your intro Spanish courses, but here are some reminders: historia, matemáticas, inglés, física, química, biología, educación física, etc. General vocabulary. Notas = grades; aprobar = to pass; suspender = to fail; conducta, comportamiento = behavior. Topics. Ms. Citraro offers the following advice: "The topics and vocabulary that would come up are about the subjects at school. For example: no ha entregado las tareas tiene que tomar el examen otra vez habla mucho en clase falta muc
Read more

How to Correctly File Hispanic Names

Image
I know that community-based learning students don't like it when they are asked to file during their time in the community. However, their learning goals are to improve their Spanish and knowledge of Latino cultures. Filing information on clients with Hispanic names helps them with both. And imagine the impact of mis-filing for the organizations where our students work and and their clients. That's why I was unhappy to learn that many SPAN 232 students did not do well on their exam section asking them to put some Hispanic names in alphabetical order. I can imagine that some students feel that putting names into alphabetical order isn't important. It is! It is especially important in the organizations where they work because they are dealing with clients who may not have "accommodated" to the American system of using only one last name. And it is especially important for clients whose papers are so important for their legal status, medical information and oth
Read more

Interview with Jessica Horn of ACCIÓN Chicago

Image
By Carolyn Kloecker , Span 232 student This past week I completed an assignment for my Business Communications class (SPCM 211) which was to interview someone in a field that I am interested in working for in the future. I asked her many questions about the organization, and lots of information can be found on their website www.accionchicago.org . This organization is a Community Partner with Spanish & Illinois, and has an extensive connection with the Spanish-speaking community in the Chicagoland area. Here are a few of the questions and answers from Jessica: Is ACCIÓN a fairly new organization? How did it begin? ACCIÓN Chicago started in 1994, but the parent organization, ACCIÓN was started in 1961. It is the largest micro-lending organization, and it began in Venezuela, and took root in the U.S. in 1991. How do loan officers communicate with clients? Mostly by phone, as people call in to the office to get a loan for their small business. The website is also a main form o
Read more