| Description |
The Issue Education and Saturday Service Project Handbook will act as a lasting component of future event planning within the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center at the University of Utah. In recent years, the Bennion Center has struggled to maintain a consistent form of issue education and quality/themes within its Saturday Service Projects. One of the main culprits of this is the high turnover of both staff and student leaders alike. This resulted in volunteers within the Bennion Center not always having a full understanding of the social, political, economic, or systemic issues behind much of the service they were performing. The mission statement of the Bennion Center reads, "The Bennion Center fosters lifelong service and civic participation by engaging the University with the greater community in action, change, and learning." The lack of consistent issue education has in some ways inhibited the Bennion Center from fulfilling its mission statement. This is due to the fact that education is necessary to specifically affect, "action, change, and learning." As such, the primary purpose of this Handbook is to help the Bennion Center better fulfill its mission statement. With its roots in the Issue Education Coordinator position, the Issue Education and Saturday Service Project Handbook has developed into a resource available to all Bennion Center students to learn about various methods of researching, planning and executing a Saturday Service Project or issue education piece. Within its covers lie examples of social issues, learning modules, academic resources, suggested timelines and lists of helpful contacts. After working extensively with Bennion Center staff, it has been confirmed that this will become the primary resource for the Bennion Student Board when planning any of the six to eight Saturday Service Projects throughout the academic year. In addition, the handbook will be available in a digital format on the Bennion Center's server to allow for updating and constant revision. |
