Creating access : an examination of the viability of Toronto's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy as a tool of access for undocumented residents

In 2004, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was proposed to community service organizations, police and school boards in Toronto, Canada as a strategy for providing undocumented residents with access to basic services and protections. Under this proposal, service organizations would implement policies against collecting status information from clients and would agree to refrain from reporting undocumented clients to immigration enforcement. While there has been some positive reception to DADT in the city, numerous challenges have threatened its long term viability. This study examines the problems involved in implementing this policy and explores how this initiative may be effective in providing undocumented residents with access to basic services.

Creating access : an examination of the viability of Toronto's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy as a tool of access for undocumented residents

In 2004, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was proposed to community service organizations, police and school boards in Toronto, Canada as a strategy for providing undocumented residents with access to basic services and protections. Under this proposal, service organizations would implement policies against collecting status information from clients and would agree to refrain from reporting undocumented clients to immigration enforcement. While there has been some positive reception to DADT in the city, numerous challenges have threatened its long term viability. This study examines the problems involved in implementing this policy and explores how this initiative may be effective in providing undocumented residents with access to basic services.

Public Health Systems and Social Services: Breadth and Depth of Cross-Sector Collaboration

Objectives. To examine the extent to which social service organizations participate in the organizational networks that implement public health activities in US communities, consistent with recent national recommendations. Methods. Using data from a national sample of US communities, we measured the breadth and depth of engagement in public health activities among specific types of social and community service organizations. Results. Engagement was most prevalent (breadth) among organizations providing housing and food assistance, with engagement present in more than 70% of communities. Engagement was least prevalent among economic development, environmental protection, and law and justice organizations (less than 33% of communities). Depth of engagement was shallow and focused on a narrow range of public health activities. Conclusions. Cross-sector relationships between public health and the housing and food sectors are now widespread across the United States, giving most communities viable avenues for addressing selected social determinants of health. Relationships with many other social and community service organizations are more limited. Public Health Implications. Public health leaders should prioritize opportunities for engagement with low-connectivity social sectors in their communities such as law, justice, and economic development.

Aligning Needs: Integrating Citizen Science Efforts into Schools Through Service Requirements.

Citizen science is an increasingly valuable tool for both scientists and educators. For researchers, citizen science is a means of more quickly investigating questions which would otherwise be time-consuming and costly to study. For educators, citizen science offers a means to engage students in actual research and improve learning outcomes. Since most citizen science projects are usually designed with research goals in mind, many lack the necessary educator materials for successful integration in a formal science education (FSE) setting. In an ideal world, researchers and educators would build the necessary materials together; however, many researchers lack the time, resources, and networks to create these materials early on in the life of a citizen science project. For resource-poor projects, we propose an intermediate entry point for recruiting from the educational setting: community service or service learning requirements (CSSLRs). Many schools require students to participate in community service or service learning activities in order to graduate. When implemented well, CSSLRs provide students with growth and development opportunities outside the classroom while contributing to the community and other worthwhile causes. However, CSSLRs take time, resources, and effort to implement well. Just as citizen science projects need to establish relationships to transition well into formal science education, schools need to cultivate relationships with community service organizations. Students and educators at schools with CSSLRs where implementation is still a work in progress may be left with a burdensome requirement and inadequate support. With the help of a volunteer fulfilling a CSSLR, we investigated the number of students impacted by CSSLRs set at different levels of government and explored the qualifications needed for citizen science projects to fulfill CSSLRs by examining the explicitly-stated justifications for having CSSLRs, surveying how CSSLRs are verified, and using these qualifications to demonstrate how an online citizen science project, Mark2Cure, could use this information to meet the needs of students fulfilling CSSLRs.

Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating the County Leadership Program

A teaching guide produced by the Florida Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Advisory committees working with Extension County Faculty as well as other community service organizations using this guide will develop a group of local leaders with effective resolution and goal attainment skills. Original publication date March 2005.

EPICS: Meeting Outcomes with Multidisciplinary Student Teams

Engineering Projects in Community Service— EPICS — is a service-learning program that wasdeveloped nearly twenty years ago at Purdue University.Under this program, undergraduate students inmultidisciplinary teams earn academic credit for longtermprojects that solve technology-based problems forlocal or global community service organizations. TheEPICS model has been implemented at 23 universities inNorth American and on other continents. With itsemphasis on the start-to-finish design of significantprojects that will be deployed by the communitycustomers, EPICS addresses many of the programoutcomes mandated by ABET and the CEAB and, morebroadly, to meet the Washington Accord graduateattributes. This paper describes the curricular andassessment procedures and documentation that have beendeveloped to enhance and evaluate the students' abilitiesto meet outcomes including functioning onmultidisciplinary teams; communicate effectively; andunderstand the impact of engineering solutions in aglobal and societal context.

Student Management And Human Intelligence Skills Enhanced Through Community Service

Based on years of human intelligence research conducted by Howard Gardner and results from a quantitative research study supporting Gardners research collected from a sample of 205 faculty within the United States, the researcher examined students that are actively engaged in community service experiences and their approaches to reframing their intelligences and enhancing their unique learning, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. Students who reach beyond the class or virtual rooms of academia and become actively involved in community service organizations gain organizational experiences that sharpen their management and human intelligence skills to equip them with operating in a competitive world of constant organizational change.