Poverty is both a cause and an effect of insufficient access to, or completion of, a quality education.
Addressing Poverty Through Strong Schools and Strong Communities: A Service Learning Approach
A Collaboration between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Griffin Campus, the College of Education, and the Griffin-Spalding County School System, Cowan Road Middle School
Can a K-12, service-learning approach that uses issues of poverty as the driving force behind what and how students learn improve their academic achievement, civic dispositions, and contribute to the reduction of poverty?
Service-Learning Projects
6th Grade: Financial Literacy
7th Grade: Pre-K, Kindergarten Literacy
8th Grade: Health Impacts of Poverty
Outgrowth of Project
Community Poverty Simulation
New research projects
Math for parents
Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County
Strengthening Our Communities
Beginning Question
What key issue must be addressed in order to solve the problem of poverty in Griffin-Spalding County?
Issue Areas
- FAMILY
- CRIME
- HOUSING
- HEALTH
- EDUCATION
- TRANSPORTATION
- LIFE SKILLS
- ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
- CHILD AND YOUTH SERVICES
- COMMUNITY MINDSET
Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County
Creating an Action Agenda for Our Future
Partners for a Prosperous Griffin-Spalding County spent over a year focusing on issues.
- Education
- Single Mother Births
- Housing
- Economic Development
- Health
- Transportation
33 Recommendations for Action were developed
Recommendations for Action
Four major action items:
- Establish a Community Resource Center
- Obtain major funding for capacity building
- Develop a Community Foundation
- Continue a Community Conversation
A Community Conversation
- We think education is important—do you? If you do, what can we do to continue to improve the education of our children as well as adults?
- We think having a house and contributing to your neighborhood is important—do you? If you do, how can we help you in your neighborhood?
- We think being from a dual-parent home is important—do you? If you do, what can we all do to reduce single-parent births?
Strengthening Communities Grant
A federal initiative
- American Recovery & Reinvestment Act
- U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services
- Administration for Children & Families
34 awards nationwide
- $1,000,000 over two years
- Oct 1, 2009 – Sept 30, 2011
- $341,600 local match
- $600,000 toward sub-awards
Purpose
To build the capacity of grassroots nonprofit organizations to address economic recovery issues present in their communities
“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968