The Social Problems (Service Learning) Project
This assignment originally involved a “service learning” aspect,
doing actual volunteer work with an organization that is working on a
social problem, and then writing a report about it. We stopped the
volunteering part during the pandemic; we were not going to send
students out into potentially compromising situations. The assignment
was changed to a research paper.
The project description can be found at “Social Problems
Project” in the Content column on the course home page. The
assignment is laid out very clearly.
“To complete this project, students must essentially 1) conduct
research on a social problem using local, state, and national data, and 2)
identify and profile two organizations that are working to alleviate this
social problem.”
As you read the project description further, you will see the
emphasis on finding relevant data and citing sources of your
information. This entire course is data-oriented, as you can see from the
lecture handouts. This is your chance to do some original research, to
use the Internet to find information relevant to your chosen social
problem and use that information/data to make your case for why this is
a social problem.
Then you will locate two organizations that are trying to do
something about the social problem. These can be local, state, national
or even international, but should have some sort of local significance.
For example if you are profiling a global environmental organization, try
to relate that to local environmental concerns.
In pre-Covid times, you would be volunteering on-site in-person
and interacting with people there, having conversations, perhaps doing
interviews, and finding out what’s going on in the organization. In
today’s world, that is probably not possible for the majority of you, and
most of your work will probably be done on the Internet. But perhaps
you are already working with some local organization that has worked
out a Covid protocol allowing volunteers to work safely together, in
which case you might want to go ahead and volunteer and profile that
organization, but that is not a requirement.
If you are working online, most organizations have chat lines and
email addresses, so it is possible to contact them. You might even be
able to arrange an interview via Zoom or Fb Messenger to get to ask
some questions.
However you get there, the kind of questions I would be
interested in asking are:
What is your mission/purpose?
How do you go about trying to accomplish your mission? (Detail
activities)
Do you feel like you are accomplishing much of your mission?
What are the greatest obstacles to carrying out your mission?
Where does your funding come from?
Has Covid affected your ability to carry out your mission, and if
so how?