Making Change: A Philanthropic Service-Learning Program

The New York State Department of Education's Learn and Serve America Program partnered with IGESL in order to incorporate a service-learning program that includes activities to help promote philanthropy, academic learning, and civic responsibility. Students participate in fundraising activities with the goal of using these funds to implement and support service-learning projects in their communities.

Making Change is a three-fold process in which students learn about service-learning and philanthropy by:

1. Planning and implementing a community-wide fundraising campaign
2. Devising methods to allocate the money to neighborhood organizations through service-learning projects.
3. Designing and carrying out meaningful action (service-learning projects) to improve their communities.

Making Change aims at addressing barriers to student learning, by providing them with purposeful experiences that help connect students with their community. This program seeks to prompt students to identify problems in their community, understand why these problems exist, and take action in order to make a difference. Making Change’s overarching goal is to involve students in philanthropic activities through which they understand and address community needs. In addition to improving the community, they become more interested in learning activities.

The purpose of this program is to give young people in K-12 grades an opportunity to become actively engaged in their communities while learning valuable academic, social, and leadership skills. Making Change is an integral program which promotes students’ participation in philanthropic efforts which involve raising funds for service-learning projects. These fundraising efforts are tied to the academic instruction; the program activities can be incorporated into subjects such as math, social studies, science, writing, art, civic education, etc. For example, curricular activities can range from simple math calculations in the primary grades to studying history of the American denominations in high schools. Students meet academic standards while raising money, identifying their community’s pressing needs, designing, soliciting and evaluating proposals, making grants, and becoming involved in community service projects.

Once the fundraising campaign has ended and students have tabulated the results, they develop a Community Change Committee. The goal of this committee is to assess the needs and assets of the community in order to identify potential service-learning projects. This committee will evaluate a variety of community issues which relate to education and literacy, health, the elderly, the homeless, and the environment. The committee then creates a proposal for fundraising and notifies others in the school about how to apply for funding. Finally, the committee decides which projects to support.

Online Resources

• Elements of Service-Learning in Making Change: The PARC Model
• Making Change Lessons Promoting Character Traits
• Making Change: Integrating Philanthropy into the Curriculum
• Making Change: A Manual for Facilitators to Implement the program