Civic Engagement

This course examines how to effectively use differing media to bring people to and connect people within grassroots organizations. Through a civic engagement experience at LIFT, students will have an opportunity to actively work with LIFT clients and use that experience to create powerful, values-based language to reach out to a wide audience of community members and supporters. Class meets at Drexel one hour per week and students are required to schedule time at LIFT for three hours per week. The final project will include creating (and possibly implementing) a fundraising event or campaign. Through this course, students will learn basics of non-profit communication, how to generate meaningful materials for volunteer and supporter recruiting, and about communication across cultures.

This course examines how to effectively use communication to organize groups of people towards a similar goal or cause. Though a civic engagement experience at LIFT, you will have the opportunity to actively work with LIFT clients and use that experience to create a meaningful message to promote LIFTs values to a wide audience of community members and supporters. The final project will include creating and implementing a small educational event or campaign.

Through this course, you will:

• Build a stronger partnership between LIFT and Drexel students
• Educate the Drexel community on what they can do to make an impact on poverty
• Generate meaningful, replicable educational materials for on campus volunteer recruitment
• Walk away with a better sense about what it means to mobilize communities
• Create a positive impact in the lives on Philadelphia community members
• Spend 3 hours per week volunteering one-on-one at LIFT at 56th and Chestnut

This course is offered in partnership with LIFT, an organization dedicated to combatting poverty in the U.S. by engaging student advocates who work side-by-side with low-income community members to address immediate needs and chart a path out of poverty. Students in this course will examine larger social structures and investigate an individual relationship with our partners in the community. The class will meet once a week for 1 hour and the rest of the time (3 hours per week), students will be in the field participating in service work. Students will be required to participate in a volunteer training session prior to service. Learn more about LIFT.

This course brings together 15 students and 15 incarcerated men and women in a seminar that takes place inside the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia. The course is a collaboration with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, a national effort that explores the relationship between individuals and the prison system. Course members will exchange ideas and perceptions about crime and justice, the criminal justice system, corrections and imprisonment. The program gives students an opportunity to reconsider what they’ve learned about crime and justice, while allowing the “insiders” to place their life experiences in a larger framework.

This course utilizes the Inside-Out Exchange Model to explore the relationship between individuals and the city. This program is an evolving set of course experiences that create opportunities for dialogue between LIFT clients and traditional Drexel students. The program demonstrates the potential for dynamic collaborations between students who may not have otherwise had an opportunity to learn together. Most importantly, through this unique exchange, this course seeks to deepen the conversation- and transform ways of thinking about our experience of the city, civic engagement, social class and urban policy.

Through the civic engagement experience with LIFT, students will have an opportunity to examine larger, macro, social structures and investigate an individual relationship with our partners in the community this term. We will utilize the Harkness Discussion learning pedagogy to enhance the course experience. Students will use assigned discussion roles and guidelines to process the course readings, materials experience. We will meet in class each week for three hours at the LIFT West Philadelphia office.