Social workers play an important role in Central Indiana, providing support for individuals, families, and communities. A majority of the IUPUI Masters of Social Work graduates find jobs in community-based organizations locally, reports Stephanie Boys, Assistant Professor in the MSW program and recipient of the 2010 Trustees' Teaching Award. So when the students are better equipped, our community is better for it. SAVI empowers these future social workers with new skills and knowledge of a powerful (and free) resource that improves their ability to apply for grants, conduct community assessments, plan programs, and plan strategically -all critical to the organizations and programs they will be working for.

SAVI provides training to the students during a foundation-level course, required by all MSW students, that takes a look at community development and how social work fits into societal systems. The students use SAVI as a resource to conduct a community assessment for a neighborhood they are unfamiliar with. After touring and visually assessing the neighborhood, they use SAVI data to test their perceptions and identify and explain service gaps."SAVI is such an important resource for the students because it allows them to check their understanding of neighborhoods, correcting misperceptions," Boys reports."In many of the social work professions these students will pursue, knowledge of neighborhoods is important to understanding the needs of clients and community organizations."

Through this project, students learn how to find and understand community-level data and how it can help them better understand the communities and populations with which they will work."Students generally don't have the skills to create visual representations of data, and SAVI is an easy way to do that and to overcome their fear of data."

Graduates report that they use SAVI all the time in their new jobs. LeeAnn Harris, a former MSW student, went on to become the grant manager at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Indianapolis. In this role, she was responsible for writing grant requests. Using SAVI data to justify need, Boys and Girls Club obtained a $570,000-grant from the US Department of Education for new after -school programs. A recent IUPUI MSW grad and currently program manager for Public Allies Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center, Megan Johnson says that "SAVI is useful for increasing collaboration." Her exposure to SAVI was in her social work class, which made her aware of this useful resource. She encourages participants in Public Allies, a program for building young community leaders in community development, to use SAVI for asset mapping of neighborhoods and identifying potential collaborations.

SAVI has trained over 800 IUPUI students the past 5 years in courses in Social Work, Public Health, Epidemiology, Nursing, Geography, and Sociology.