It was the vision of a community agency director who brought it to the attention of Baton Rouge's two universities, Louisiana State and Southern. Our perception of the positive effects of Service-Learning on several hundred students at one university are supported by recent research on a much larger scale. They have experienced having their own lives improved by contributing to the lives of others, and they want to replicate that experience. Among the benefits cited were increases in the quality, amount, variety, and extent of the organization's services. Besides thinking of ways to open your organization to such highly rated volunteers, think about volunteering your agency to college classes.
Students can learn better by doing for agencies what they are learning to do in their classes.
Students who perform a task relevant to agency needs in an area such as writing, architecture, or business are not only volunteering, but also connecting their studies to the real world. With these benefits in mind, we asked the various agencies at which our students were volunteering to suggest writing assignments we could do for them - assignments they really needed to get completed. Students from two freshman writing classes learned how to conduct oral history interviews and primary archive research in collecting the materials for a history. We think the whole three-semester project was the best and most useful writing instruction we have done in 25 years of experience. And a community agency suggested it.