While an increasing number of colleges and universities offer curricular service through courses or independent study, there will always be a need for support and encouragement of co-curricular service that goes on through countless avenues outside the classroom from fraternities and sororities to service clubs to individuals driven to do their own thing. Colleges and universities can offer support for all such individuals to find their niche and become involved in service.
Not all community service, however, is good community service. Unfortunately, service can easily be done badly optimistic ideas thrown together can cause more harm than good. Fortunately, service can also be done well bringing mutual benefit to those serving and those served. The Harris Homes First Grade Initiative provides an example of co-curricular service at its best.
The initiative started in 1996, when parents at Harris Homes in Atlanta suggested that their children be exposed to college life through mentoring. The idea was a tried and true one: mentors are matched one-on-one with children whom they serve as a teacher and friend once a week. In the process, the children gain new visions of what the future might look like. One hundred twenty-five first graders from Harris Homes were paired with 125 freshman college students from Spelman College and Morehouse College, and a co-curricular service project had begun.
This alone would be a strong, on-going, co-curricular service. But there s more. The college students realized over time that their one-on-one relationship with these children could not so easily be relegated to a once-a-week relationship. For one thing, college students are part of a college, and it was difficult to separate their service work from that. So, mentees would come over to campus for visits with their mentors. And have lunches with their mentors. And sleepovers.
Just as college students are part of their college, the mentees they worked with were part of families. As it had been at the beginning of the program, parents input remained a driving force of the program. Mentors invited entire families onto campus, offered to share university resources, and acted as resources for neighborhood parents to address issues and concerns in the neighborhood.
It is now three years later. The mentees, now third graders, have become a familiar part of campus. Their small bodies have made frequent appearances in the cafeteria. Regularly, their shouts are heard across the campus green.
Their families too are part of campus. Support for Harris Homes parents is formalized in a peer group that meets on campus monthly to discuss common concerns. Classrooms are used for town meetings, and libraries for research.
Last year, outside funding made possible the founding of the Dean Rusk Enrichment Academy, an after-school program specializing in science and technology instruction for Harris Homes mentees that is run collaboratively by Spelman and Morehouse mentors and Harris Homes parents.
The Harris Homes Initiative has succeeded by being ongoing and long-term; building upon human relationships; involving thorough engagement with community members; and evolving over time to meet changing ideas, abilities, needs, and visions. From the start of the Harris Homes co-curricular service project in 1996, the Spelman and Morehouse students wanted their mentees to get the message that: This is college and you can come here. Over the course of three years, that message has been joined by a chorus of others: this is your neighborhood, this is your family, this is your community.
