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Short Term 2013 - Vol 5, Issue 3
In This Issue
Party Time at Head Start
Grant Prospecting for Somali Bantu Youth Association
Researching the Benefits of a Park for Friends of Pettingill
WinterKids Challenge Data Analysis
Conducting Focus Groups for Healthy Androscoggin
Analyzing Data for the Safe Voices Batterer's Intervention Program
Assessing First-Responder Knowledge for the Not Here Justice in Action Network
Examining TB Policies at Colleges and Universities throughout Maine
Support our Bonner Leader Program!
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Dear Friends,

 

Short Term 2013 came and went in the blink of an eye. If not for the stack of ungraded papers still calling my name, I wouldn't believe it happened at all. During the past five weeks Harward Center staff have stepped up in truly impressive ways--leading the college's multifaceted response to a series of tragedies in the local community; providing indispensable technical support to faculty overseeing community-engaged learning courses; connecting an unprecedented number of students to intensive volunteer projects in local agencies; preparing for another busy summer at our coastal campus (Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area and Shortridge Research Center); and, as this newsletter highlights, overseeing the intense activities of this year's Short Term Action/Research Team (STA/RT).

 

By all accounts, the STA/RT program's second year was a resounding success. Eight talented students emerged from a competitive selection process to be named STA/RT Fellows, with the charge of working together to address a diverse array of community needs that could not be met during the regular academic year. The eight Fellows worked together on one project during the first week of the five-week program and then fanned out in smaller teams to make progress on seven other projects. As the student-authored accounts below indicate, this year's STA/RT Fellows both contributed and grew their knowledge and skills as a result of working with each other and with community partners to address important issues in the local and statewide communities.  Throughout the process, Fellows were guided and supported by smart and talented staff members from the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. 

 

The Short Term Action/Research Team is one program among many at Bates that builds the capacity of participants for collaborative problem-solving and informed civic action. For information about other efforts, please see the Quick Links menu on the left, visit the Harward Center web page, or drop us a line or stop by for a visit at 161 Wood Street. We welcome and appreciate your ideas and support! 

 

Best wishes,

Darby K. Ray 

Director

Party Time at Head Start 
by Rin Ichino, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2014

For the first ten days of Short Term, I worked intensively on preparing for the third annual Head Start Block Party, which took place on May 1, 2013. With the support of Head Start staff, fellow Bates student Sarika Subramaniam and I developed five play stations based on themes in Head Start curricula, as well as five physical activities called Wiggles as short breaks between stations. We got materials from the Share Center and help from other members of the STA/RT team on much of the prep work.

 

On the day of the Block Party, 66 children and 22 Bates volunteers participated. We implemented a rain stick activity for literacy and music; sandbox bingo where kids would find and match up foam numbers with bingo boards; shadow tracing; a water station to observe how certain objects sink or float in water; and worm farms that will be used later in the Head Start classrooms. All the stations were successful, and everyone who participated had fun. I have since gotten positive feedback from both volunteers and Head Start teachers.

 

When I was told I had only ten days to prepare for the Block Party, I could not imagine that we could make it happen so quickly. It was great to see how things came together and how we were able to create and implement a plan so efficiently and creatively. It was all made possible by my project partner and the other STA/RT Fellows, experienced Head Start staff, and STA/RT staff from the Harward Center.  

 

As an international exchange student, it was a precious experience for me to learn about the lives of children in the United States and to be involved in a community-engaged project.

Grant Prospecting for Somali Bantu Youth Association
by Sarika Subramaniam, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2014

Over the past five weeks as a member of the STA/RT team, I have been working on a grant project for the Somali Bantu Youth Association (SBYA) of Maine. SBYA provides important education programming for at-risk immigrant and refugee youth and adults in the Lewiston community, which makes the organization extremely valuable. Rilwan Osman, the director of the organization, believes in bridging the communication gap between adults and youth throughout the assimilation process. This conviction is evident in the diversity of programs that occur each week, which range from extracurricular soccer events to citizenship and financial literacy classes.

 

To support these and other programs, I worked with Rilwan and Joseph Tomaras of the Bates College Office of External Grants to research and identify grants that will suit the needs of SBYA. During the second week of Short Term, Joseph suggested a federal grant that provides funding for citizenship and naturalization classes, which is perfect for the organization. We worked diligently to put together this grant, which was submitted at the end of short term.  

 

It was a great opportunity for me to learn how to search for grants and actually write one of them. This project allowed me to gain a better understanding of the goals of SBYA and integrate these goals into the body of the grant I worked on. As a STA/RT Fellow, I learned valuable skills that I will use beyond this project and after I graduate from Bates.

Researching the Benefits of a Park for the Friends of Pettingill
by Deana Lorenzo, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2013

Friends of Pettingill is a community organization whose mission is to create a 2-acre park at the site of the former Pettingill Elementary School, only a few blocks away from Bates. The current site includes a playground and parking lot. The blueprints for a new park would expand the lawn and possibly include a few gardens, creating a lively recreational space that would be open to all members of the Lewiston community. Friends of Pettingill envision the park as a communal environment for people of all ages and hope that it will help invite young families to live in the area and strengthen the community for generations to come. On May 15th, the organization held a block party to rally support for the park. The event was well attended by Lewiston families, town authorities, and members of the Bates community, who braved the wind and rain that evening to hear several town officials and politicians voice their support, including Lewiston Mayor Robert MacDonald and Rep. Peggy Rotundo.

 

As STA/RT Fellows, Ted Wells '13 and I worked with Bates-Morse Mountain director Laura Sewall and community member Dr. Ted Walworth to research the psychological and overall health benefits of nearby nature in hopes that the Friends of Pettingill organization can use this information to support their argument in favor of converting the old school into a neighborhood park. Ted and I investigated psychological and physiological evidence that explains why contact with nature is so important to our health. We found out that spending time outside has many immediate and long term benefits, such as attention restoration, stress reduction, and increased physical activity for populations that live close to nature. Parks often provide safe, accessible, natural environments for people living in urban settings such as Lewiston.  

 

We summarized the findings of our research in a 12-page report that includes an annotated bibliography to guide further research on the topic. From what we learned through our research and working with Friends of Pettingill, we can conclude that parks provide more than just a visually pleasant plot of grass; they demonstrate how our individual health and sense of community have roots in nature.

WinterKids Challenge Data Analysis
by Quincy Snellings, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2015 

As part of the Harward Center's Short Term Action/ Research Team, I partnered with WinterKids, a non-profit organization that strives to create greater access to outdoor winter activities for youth across the state of Maine. Although they have many innovative programs, I focused on the WinterKids Challenge, "which encourages preschool and elementary school teachers to incorporate fun, outdoor activity into their winter lessons" (WinterKids 2013). I was responsible for analyzing the teachers' surveys of each lesson as well as their overall satisfaction with the WinterKids Challenge. Although this was the third season of the WinterKids Challenge, very little data analysis had been done because the organization does not have access to SPSS (a data analysis program). Using Bates' subscription to SPSS I was able to do the work they needed more easily. I produced four reports that outlined the success of the program as well as areas for improvement. Having these reports is especially valuable to the WinterKids staff because it will allow them to confidently state what they have already intuitively known is true of their program: that is benefits children and educators in this state tremendously.  

 

I have learned so much from working on the WinterKids project. As a sociology major I took Research Methods this fall. Although I did hands on data analysis, it was in a controlled environment and only for a small section of the course. Working on the WinterKids data set allowed me to solidify and reinforce the skills I learned in the classroom. As a social scientist, the skills learned by partnering with WinterKids will help me in my college seminars, senior thesis, and after graduation from Bates. It has been a wonderful experience to collaborate with WinterKids, my fellow STA/RT team members, and the exceptional staff at the Harward Center.

Conducting Focus Groups for Healthy Androscoggin
by Akinyele Akinruntan, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2013  

As a Bates STA/RT Fellow, I worked with a Lewiston/Auburn organization called Healthy Androscoggin to assess the most effective ways for the organization to serve the local immigrant and refugee populations by helping to create plans and strategies for activities that would be well-suited to the needs of these particular communities. Meetings were held, plans for outreach were discussed and outlined, and nine focus groups were held over the course of two days with the local Lewiston and Auburn Somali populations to evaluate their perception of health and how Healthy Androscoggin could best serve their population and address their needs in the future. This action-based project allowed me to gather and learn valuable knowledge about how best to serve the health needs of this community.  

 

My work with Healthy Androscoggin required knowledge from various sources: a cultural interpreter, connections and networks within the local immigrant and refugee communities, and an awareness of the adversities constantly being faced by these individuals on a daily basis. Without the assistance of our cultural interpreter, Kheyro Jama, staff from Healthy Androscgoggin, and another STA/RT team member, Quincy Snellings, I would not have been able to learn how the local Somali community, from youth to elderly, perceive both physical and mental health, exercise, and nutrition.  

 

Being a STA/RT team member, we are taught about the importance of civic engagement and how working in the community allows both community partner and volunteer to both grow and learn in the process. This project with Healthy Androscoggin has made me appreciate the things often taken for granted like having English as my first language and having access to adequate health services. This project has been meaningful and taught me valuable skills that I will implement and always think consciously about as I engage in various endeavors in the future after graduating from Bates.

Analyzing Data for the Safe Voices Batterer's Intervention Program
by Raisa Sharmin, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2013

As is typical of community-engaged learning and research projects, mine began by meeting with a community partner to talk about her vision of the work and how my STA/RT partner, Reese Mohrer, and I could bring our skills to bear on that work.

 

Reese and I met with Kelley Glidden of Safe Voices, a local non-profit organization that hosts a Batterer's Intervention Program, and talked about the main goals of the project: to record raw data from intake forms, analyze the data, and write a report presenting our analysis. Getting to work, Reese and I designed a spreadsheet to accommodate entries from the intake forms from participants of the Safe Voices Batterers Intervention Program. With help from Reese and other STA/RT Fellows, we input data from 74 fairly complicated forms, which formed the sample we used for our analysis. Next, we analyzed the data in SPSS, a process which consisted mostly of looking at demographic differences between those who completed the intervention program and those who did not. 

 

The final report consisted of two parts. The first was a data report with pie charts, bar graphs, and  cross tabs. The second part was a short report summarizing our findings. It was great working with Safe Voices because we had to go to their office often to do our data input, and while we were there we got a sense of what the organization does and how it operates. Reese and I found the experience very rewarding. In addition to the tangible outcomes already mentioned, we hope our spreadsheet can serve as a template for future use by the organization.

Assessing First-Responder Knowledge for the NOT HERE Justice in Action Network
by Reese Mohrer, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2013

As STA/RT Fellows, Raisa Sharmin and I worked with Ben Corey from the Not Here Justice in Action Network and the Foundation for Hope and Grace to complete a research project that consisted of three assignments. After researching cases of labor and sex trafficking in Maine, Raisa and I wrote victim profiles, detailing who is most at risk for being trafficked. We then ran a focus group interview with Lewiston/ Auburn firefighters to discern their knowledge of and response techniques to cases of human trafficking. The third component of our project included a final report of our findings and a presentation to the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Hope and Grace.  

 

The information we gathered proved helpful and informative to our community partners. Firefighters in L/A have not received previous training on human trafficking, but they are open to learning more about the issue. The Foundation for Hope and Grace can use our findings to develop training sessions that educate first-responders, increase their awareness about human trafficking, and help them respond to victims with the goal of making Lewiston/Auburn a trafficking-free community.

 

In addition to our research project, I was able to contact a sex trafficking survivor from Massachusetts who now mentors at-risk girls. Upon my request, she agreed to share her story with the Bates community. Approximately 120 people attended her talk on May 16, and numerous students asked questions indicating their interest in the issue. Overall, both projects were extremely rewarding. Our research findings will help lay the groundwork for creating training courses for L/A's first-responders, and the event at Bates successfully raised awareness on campus about human trafficking.

Examining TB Policies at Colleges and Universities throughout Maine
by Ted Wells, STA/RT Fellow, Class of 2013

For my senior biology thesis, I spent the year investigating and mapping out the current process to diagnose, treat, and prevent latent tuberculosis (LTBI) among Maine's refugee population. The result was the creation of a final document that is intended to be used as a training document for TB in the refugee population for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Due to the success of my thesis and the close relationships I was able to form during the process, I applied to be a part of the Harward Center's Short Term Action/Research Team (STA/RT) with the hopes of continuing my work with TB and with my contacts at the CDC. After my acceptance as a member of the team, I developed a project under the CDC's TB Control Coordinator Dalit Wolfe's guidance, which aimed to examine what policies for TB testing are currently implemented at colleges and universities throughout the state of Maine. Specifically, the research aimed to investigate differences among international students, domestic students, and students who study abroad. With this information, the CDC would be able to expand their knowledge of TB on college campuses and increase their ability to address problems and concerns about TB that may arise at these Maine schools.

 

Through a six-question over-the-phone questionnaire, my secondary project lead Akinyele Akinruntan and I attempted to survey a number of school's health centers. Unfortunately, this task proved substantially more difficult than expected, and we were only able to speak to a small handful of schools. However, despite the limitations of this project during our brief four weeks, some great foundations were laid for future work. Most importantly, this project taught me one of the other sides of "real world" research: not every research project works out as planned, and you can still learn an immense amount from these experiences. While my actual project results were limited, the knowledge I gained from this experience was not, and my passion for fighting infectious diseases such as TB continues to grow.

Support our Bonner Leader Program!
Bates is actively seeking funds to support its Bonner Leader Program.  If you have questions, or would like to support the Bonner Leader Program, please contact Ellen Alcorn at the Harward Center at 207-786-8235.

For more information about the Bonner Leader Program at Bates, please check out these videos (note that you will be redirected to the Bates College channel on Vimeo):

Video: The Bonner Leader Program - a passion for community service and civic engagement at Bates

Questions?
Please contact Kristen Cloutier or visit us online.