From: Linda Bendixen
Date: August 31, 2020
Subject: Steans Center Newsletter - August 2020


August 2020

News from the Steans Center, Egan Office, and ABCD Institute at DePaul University.

$1 Million Gift Honors the Legacy of Harrison I. Steans

It is with great pleasure and gratitude that DePaul University announces the establishment of the Harrison I. Steans Graduate Fellowship Program. The program, which will be housed within the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning and Community Service Studies, was made possible by the generous gift of $1 million from the Morrison family and the Harold M. and Adeline S. Morrison Family Foundation.

Graduate Fellow-led projects will be designed collaboratively with community partners and will draw inspiration from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which represent a call to action by linking poverty elimination to strategies that improve health, education and economic growth, while also combating climate change and damage to ecosystems. Fellows will be chosen through a competitive selection process and expected to perform 100 hours of service per term, with potential support for three consecutive terms.

Read more here.

Community Engagement Online?
Check out OCE Live 

Community-based Service Learning (CbSL) students continued their community engagement, despite the pandemic lockdown, thanks to ASL's Online Community Engagement (OCE) Resource Guide and Live Event series. You can watch OCE Live Event recordings from spring and summer ’20 and RSVP here for the autumn.

Collaboratory: Tracking DePaul's Mission

Collaboratory captures where faculty, staff, and students are working; with whom they are working; and how these community engagement activities are addressing issues by topic (social, education, health and wellness). 

This illustration offers a preliminary understanding of trends in activities as we continue to populate Collaboratory throughout the next year. 

To add activities to Collaboratory, click here, or contact Barbara Smith for more details at bsmith@depaul.edu. 

Support the Seeds of the Mission Campaign

The Steans Center is proud to be a part of the Seeds of the Mission campaign, which is gathering stories of students, faculty, staff, alumni and community partners living the DePaul Mission of embracing a movement for justice and deepening the commitment of defending the inherent dignity of every person.  We invite you to join the campaign and share your stories of community involvement and service learning by contacting contact the Division of Mission & Ministry at seedsofmission@depaul.ed​u, or you can fill out this short form and DMM will contact you. 

ABCD Institute Policy Statement on Anti-Racism

A great deal of thought by a team of ABCD Institute faculty and staff went into creating our anti-racism statement. It was important that the statement included specific actions the Institute will take to make sure our words are reflected in practice. The statement appears on the homepage of the website and was shared via our Facebook page. You can read the entire statement by clicking on the link below.

Black Lives Matter.
The ABCD Institute acknowledges that Black and Brown people and Black and Brown communities are and have been under the occupation of systemic racism throughout American history for more than 400 years. We believe any community development work that does not acknowledge and address this reality is short sighted and will ultimately fail to build an authentic, sustainable, healthy community. READ MORE


“Global” Asset and Strengths Based (un)Conference session recordings on YouTube

Looking for a diverse understanding of how ABCD is implemented? Check out the recordings from the (un)Conference held June 24 and 25 via Zoom.  The event featured 48 consecutive hours of presentations from hosts on five continents in 22 countries. Global asset and strengths-based practitioners shared stories, wisdom and experience with over 1,250 participants in 39 sessions on a variety of ABCD topics.

Here are a few great examples to start you off:
Crisis Collectivism Stewarding Emergent Power Via Stories of Response
Asset Based Centering Black Economic Liberation, Community Building and Autonomy
Activating Community Assets through Social Capital in the context of refugee resettlements in Australia

All sessions are now live on YouTube. Watch the conference sessions here.
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