The Steans Center, Egan Office and ABCD Institute firmly stand with our Asian, Asian-American and Pacific Island communities to Stop Asian Hate. We reject the discrimination, racism, xenophobia and white supremacy that is inspiring the rise of anti-Asian violence and hate crimes against Asian, Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in our country.
The Steans Center, Egan Office and ABCD Institute stand against the harassment and violence AAPI citizens are experiencing and we are committed to working in collaboration with our AAPI communities to build strong, inclusive and equitable communities for all people.
Service Speaks Annual Conference - May 28
Each year the Steans Center, in collaboration with the Council on Community Engagement, showcases the learning of DePaul’s community-engaged students through the Service Speaks Annual Conference. This year's May 28 online event will featuring a student-community partner panel and on-line community engagement PowerPoint presentation. Students will share their community-engaged learning by distilling it into the smallest possible “container” of a PowerPoint slide. All students, faculty, staff, and community partners will be invited.
Additionally, each year we profile outstanding students, faculty, and community partners in our Service Speaks Chapbook. Please take this opportunity to nominate your exemplary Students in Service over this past year.
For more information about this year's event, please contact Steans Center Associate Director Helen Damon-Moore.
OCE Live Event Series - Spring 2021
OCE Live is a series of discussions, presentations and workshops led by our Community Partners, Faculty and Students to explore social justice issues in an era of global pandemic and civic uprising. Check out the spring schedule and register here and/or please contact SERVICELEARNING@DEPAUL.EDU for more information. Spring Quarter OCE Live events will be on Fridays from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Upcoming dates and topics
4/16 - COVID-19: The Effort Behind Vaccinating our City
4/23 - Podcasts for Change
4/30 - LGBTQBIA Allyship
5/7 - Mental Health in 2021
5/14 - Bystander Intervention Training: Addressing Anti-Asian Hate
5/21 - Prison Abolition: A Conversation with Keith LaMar, Death Row Inmate
Steans Student Spotlight - Nick Cashman
Nick Cashman, a senior at DePaul, has been volunteering for more than nine years, beginning in eighth grade at a soup kitchen outside Joliet.
"Daybreak Shelter was more than a soup kitchen as they also housed residents in their building and provided 24/7 support and three meals a day. The first time that I visited Daybreak Shelter I was greeted with a sense of warmth and family from all the people in the building and I knew I needed to give that feeling back to them in the food and service that I was going to provide them. From that point on I knew that I wanted to provide that experience to as many people as possible and thus began my passion for working in restaurants."
At DePaul, Nick joined the Steans Center and was assigned as a mentor in the afterschool program at Erie House, and helped to start a community garden.
“My work with Erie House and David (his mentee) specifically taught me how to stay and guide peoples’ focus, as well as showed me how to connect with a community by listening to the members of that community.
"Community service has been a part of my life for the past 9 years of my life; it has shaped who I am. From soup kitchens to student mentoring it has molded my career and my personal life. Every couple of years the scope of my service changes but the main goal has always remained the same, to help communities grow. With each new service site comes new lessons to be learned, so far, they have been hospitality, focusing, and community connection. But it all began with hospitality and a passion for serving those in need."
Celebrate Women’s History Month on Collaboratory
Help us observe and celebrate Women’s History Month by recognizing how DePaul’s faculty, staff and students engage with women and girls on a broad range of activities and issues of public interest in Chicago communities and internationally. We invite you to add to the stories in Collaboratory, the university’s platform for collecting and communicating community engagement activities, enabling us to share all the good work we do across the university. Share your research, your community engagement, your public service and your projects that shine a spotlight on your work with women and girls making an impact in their communities, the nation and the world.
Click here to login to Collaboratory using your CampusConnect userID.
For more information about Collaboratory, please contact Steans Center Associate Director Barbara Smith.
ABCD Institute Event:
A Unique Approach to Asset-Based Poverty Reduction with ABCD Institute Steward, Paul Born
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
2:30 pm - 4:00pm CST
@Zoom
The Tamarack Institute in Canada has created a unique approach to reducing poverty in local communities. Their initiative in hundreds of cities has proven to be an effective method for engaging entire communities in poverty reduction.
Join Paul Born, Co-CEO of the Tamarack Institute, as he shares their approach to mobilizing communities to launch campaigns for large scale change. Active in nearly 400 communities in Canada and the US, the Tamarack Institute provides both a methodology for organizing and the supports that make the work of large-scale community change easier and more effective.
If you liked our Language Exchange last quarter, we have good news for you! Starting this quarter we will host a language exchange EVERY WEEK. Join us on Mondays at 6 p.m. for an hour-long virtual meet-up where we will each practice our Spanish and English. This is a learning environment open to all who are interested in practicing their skills.
Egan Office - Family Engagement & Coalition Building
The Egan Office continues to develop the new Egan Family Engagement and Coalition Initiative with funding from two external donors. Staff held meetings and check-ins with the coordinator and partners. Families officially started classes on March 5 learning about Asset Based Community Development, followed by a lesson on Project Development and Management. Other activities:
Partnership development with the DePaul Translation and Interpreters Corp, will provide opportunities for DePaul students learn translation and interpretation skills in the community.
Family participants cohort from Egan school partners was finalized and laptop computers were distributed.
Family participants met on February 26 to learn how to navigate their EFECt Google classroom, Zoom, and their new laptop computers.
Family participants also received more information regarding the modules, program expectations, and the next session.
Staff is developing the Egan Family Engagement newsletter.
Staff also is introducing and connecting families with community organizations and community services in their neighborhoods to expand their community network.
Teaching Resources from CRCC
The Center for Religion, Culture, and Community (CRCC) is offering two resources for spring quarter.
Enhanced Honoraria ($250 - $350) for guest speakers/interlocutors who address CRCC-related themes. These themes could include any combination of religion, spirituality, community, and/or culture. At the CRCC, we seek not only to promote informed and critical conversations about institutional religions, but we also support conversations that probe more organic and everyday expressions of human religiosity and spirituality, broadly construed. (Such expressions may even include agnostic or atheistic spiritualties.) If any of your classes address human spirituality in its myriad forms -- and if you would like to enhance your student’s pedagogical experience -- the CRCC would like to support your guest speaker/interlocutor! Guests can include scholars, religious practitioners, or other community leaders. For details on the process, please contact crcc@depaul.edu and ctirres@depaul.edu, and please allow up to one week for a response.
"Unveiled", the critically acclaimed, one-woman play by award-winning playwright (and DePaul graduate) Rohina Malik. The CRCC has purchased viewing rights to this 44-minute film that features the perspectives of five Muslim women and deals with themes of “racism, hate crimes, love, Islam, and life.” If your upcoming courses deal with these topics, please know that this resource is available to you. To gain access to this video via D2L, simply send an e-mail to Sean Jorgenson, REL Department Assistant.
Congratulations, Dr. Ramos!
Egan Office Assistant Director Monica Ramos, Ed.D., has been selected to the inaugural Comunidades Latinas Académicas con Visión de Éxito [Latino Academic Communities with Vision of Success] postdoctoral fellowship at National Louis University. Dr. Ramos's research focuses on family and community engagement from an asset based approach and their relationship with higher education. Congratulations, Dr. Ramos!
Chicago Food Policy Action Council Food Justice Summit
On February 25, Steans Center Executive Director Howard Rosing presented on the service learning project entitled "Chicagoland Cold Storage Mapping Project" at the 16th Annual Chicago Food Justice Summit. Students in both geography-GIS, taught by Professor Julie Hwang, and psychology, taught by Professor Olya Glantsman, collected data and mapped cold storage spaces that can be potentially accessed by mutual aid groups that seek to distribute rescued food to food insecure households.
April 7, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. CT
ABCD Institute - Tamarack Institute - Democracy: Governing Organizations Doing "With" NOT "For" ABCD Institute co-founder John McKnight and David Mathews from the Kettering Foundation will discuss how governing organizations can do 'with' NOT 'for' the people - what can be accomplished when people work hand-in-hand with the institutions created to serve them.
April 13, Noon - 1 p.m. Community-Owned Health During a Pandemic with Dr. Deborah Puntenney.Moving beyond the traditional definition of community, Deborah will speak about her work applying asset-based community development principles with the Rochester Area Foundation in order to address the social determinants of health.
