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6 pages/β‰ˆ1650 words
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4 Sources
Style:
APA
Subject:
Social Sciences
Type:
Essay
Language:
English (U.S.)
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Topic:

Service Learning Experience: Feeding Tampa Bay

Essay Instructions:

After completing this assignment, you will be able to:

  • Evaluate the impact of individual choices on local and global communities by assessing the impact of their proposed solution to a service learning assignment on the local environment
  • Communicate ideas and information to diverse audiences by communicating their proposed solution to a service learning assignment and reflecting on the feedback received
  • Demonstrate the ability to comprehend, express, and adapt to ideas based on others’ perspectives by managing a mission and vision creation process.
  • Work across and within community contexts to achieve a civic aim through participation in a service-learning project
  • Demonstrate an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities

Following are the requirements for this assignment:

The Service Learning Experience (SLE) requires you to provide service to a local non-profit organization. The SLE is a five-part process that includes investigating service opportunities, preparing for that opportunity through a “preflection,” planning your service intervention, performing your service, and reflecting on the experience. The specific disciplinary skills you provide to the non-profit organization are reinforced in the Scenario Based Strategic Management Project.

  • Investigate

Investigate various local service (non-profit) organizations and select one. Service opportunities are available through USF BullSync at https://usf.campuslabs.com/engage/. To search the system for an appropriate organization, you must create a profile.

Simply select “Service Opportunities” at the top bar of the community homepage. You can also conduct an independent search for local service organizations. Students who do not use USF BullSync to select an organization must have the non-profit organization they select approved by the instructor.

  • Plan

By the end of week 3, you must make arrangements to volunteer at a service organization that can utilize your business expertise, provide responses to a Preflection (described below).  Your Preflection should be two to three double-spaced pages and should address the following:

  • What is service learning and social responsibility to you?
  • Which service organization did you select, and who is your contact (Name, title, address, and phone)?
  • Why did you select this service organization?
  • What needs within the community does the organization serve?
  • What groups/individuals does the organization serve and what other groups/individuals/communities could benefit from the types of services provided by this organization?
  • Does the organization have a mission and/or vision statement and if so what is it?
  • What specific business expertise do you anticipate contributing/developing within the service organization?
  • What do you think you might learn from this project?
  • Action

You’ll engage in meaningful and creative service that enhances learning and provides guided practice in social responsibility by engaging with a local non-profit organization of your choice that supports families, children, disadvantaged, animals, the environment, etc., for roughly fifteen (15) hours of documented service during the semester. These hours can include on-site support, planning, meetings, research, preparation training, reflection, etc. A summary of the service hours must be attached to your Reflection paper.

  • Reflect

You must post a 5-7 page Reflection Journal to Canvas under “Service Learning Experience” by the due date in the syllabus. At the same time, you must separately post two pictures of you performing the service at your service organization. Your Reflection Paper should include what happened before, during, and after the Service Learning Experience. Each student will address the questions below.

  • Initial Expectations: Describe your initial expectations relative to the reality of the service learning experience.
  • What Would I do Differently: What would you do differently if given the opportunity to observe or shadow the organization prior to your service learning experience?
  • Disciplinary Skills to Apply: What specific disciplinary skills (i.e. skills learned in your major) have you used at your community site?
  • My Contribution: How did your contribution specifically support the goals of the service organization and/or allowed you to make a difference in the community?
  • New Vision and Mission: Based on the knowledge gained in your service learning experience and concepts taught in this class on developing a mission and vision, draft a new and improved mission and vision statement for the organization.  You should include not only the new mission and vision but also an appropriate rationale for the mission and vision including elements of the organization as well as required elements needed in a well written mission and vision statement.   
  • Share, Feedback, and Revision: Share the new mission and vision statement you created with at least two other people capable of giving you feedback on the soundness of your new mission and vision (fellow student, volunteer, or non-profit employee, etc.).  After getting feedback from the first person, revise the mission and vision statements to accommodate the new ideas or suggestions.  Do this again with the second person. Document the feedback received and how you revised the statements each time.  In other words, you must complete two rounds of sharing and revising your mission and vision statement.  Make sure you explain what advice you followed (and why) and what advice you felt didn’t warrant changes (and why).  
  • Diversity Expansion: Based on your experience with the organization and in drafting the vision and mission explain how you might recommend that the organization expand the diversity of those it serves while achieving its mission. Identify diverse constituencies that might benefit from the organization’s services or with whom it could collaborate to extend its mission.  
  • Ethical Dilemmas: Based on your service learning experience, what ethical dilemmas do you think can arise in non-profit organizations?
  • Ethical Leader Requirements: What is required to be a good ethical leader in a non-profit organization?
  • Demonstrate

We will have a celebration of the many great organizations you have researched.  You will create a 3-5 minute presentation of your Reflection Journal and post it in the class for others to view.  The presentation will be scored for oral communication for assessment purposes.  Thus, at a minimum you should be clearly visible during the entire presentation and the video and audio should be of a reasonable quality.  PowerPoint slides are optional in your video.  The presentation should be minimum of 3 minutes and maximum of 5 minutes in length.  Given this short time frame you are really only going to be able to cover some of the highlights of your project.  The nice thing is that since you are submitting a video recording (versus presenting live in class or online) you can have as many attempts as you want.

  • Formatting of Project

The entire project should be well-written, typed, and double spaced.  You should also include a title page and table of contents which does NOT count towards the page requirements of the Report.  Large amounts of copied or quoted material, project guideline questions, and adjusting settings in Word (like line spacing, margins, font size, word spacing, etc.) will also not count towards meeting the page requirements.  You should use the questions in the preflection as headings to clearly delineate your answers to each preflection question.  Similarly, you should use 9 bolded 2 to 5 word headings from the above guidelines to clearly delineate the different sections of your reflection journal.

  • Project Recap

Based on the above guidelines, here is a recap of what is due for this assignment:

Essay Sample Content Preview:

Service Learning Experience Reflection Essay: Feeding Tampa Bay
Name
Department, Institution Affiliation
Course Code; Course Name
Instructor's Name
Date
Service Learning Experience Reflection Essay: Feeding Tampa Bay
Service-learning is a key process that provides adequate experience for one to work with the community. It is an educational experience that allows individuals to combine community service activities and learning objectives to meet societal needs (Sze-Yeung Lai & Chi-leung Hui, 2021). Service-learning is critical since it shapes an individual's capacity to engage with the community and learn about their critical needs and how to rely on the organization's mission and vision to have better growth. Service-learning is progressive and determines key elements that professionally shape one's ability to grow (Miller et al., 2017). I had the opportunity to work with Feeding Tampa Bay, a non-profit organization in the United States responsible for feeding families undergoing financial insecurity. FTB's mission is "we change lives one meal at a time by leading our community in the fight against hunger", and its vision statement is "a hunger-free Tampa Bay" (FTB, 2022). The reflection is based on service experience from FTB.
Initial Expectations
Initially, I expected to learn how to engage the community members through the organization's feeding program. In my career, socialization is sometimes an issue, and I firmly believed this was the opportunity to address any communication and socialization challenges in service provision. Besides, I also expected to create substantial networks with different professionals to have better chances of employment in a non-profit organization. My interest has always been to serve the community by meeting their needs and expectations; therefore, working with FTB was a special opportunity. Lastly, I expected to improve my service provision skills and embrace servant leadership in working with the community members. I could only achieve this by bridging the gap between the theory learned in the class and the practical engagement in the FTB's feeding program. The identified expectations were purposefully meant to enhance my service learning skills.
What to do differently
When allowed to shadow the organization before the actual service-learning experience, I would engage in consistent research to identify the organization's key weaknesses and strengths. The research would enable me to inject new ideologies once I join the organization. It would also allow me to consider specific requirements in sustaining the growth and development of the organization. Additionally, since the organization deals with the communities below the poverty line and with financial insecurity, I would research and document such families before joining the organization. The process would allow me to mobilize the organization towards rational decisions as they work with other communities. Lastly, I would critically assess the organization's mission and vision to identify whether its activities align with the components of the vision and mission. The process will allow me to focus on the organization's weaknesses and determine the key strategies needed to improve them.
Disciplinary Skills
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