Building a Successful Community

Resident advisors are an important ingredient to help students live and learn effectively in a diverse environmen

Building a sense of community

Abstract: Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV) is an innovative flagship project for its stakeholders, the Department of Housing and Queensland University of Technology. Their combined vision and philosophical approach has fostered innovative research in economic, environmental and, in the case of this paper, social sustainability. As urban planners grapple with effective methods to stimulate social sustainability in the 'art of city making' through urban renewal or development projects, more are recognising that history and creativity can make great partners (Landry, 2007)

Building a Community Around the Writing Center

Recruitment and retention are important issues on every campus but especially so on small campuses like that of Casper College. My predecessor, Bob Mittan, believed as I do that the Writing Center should serve as a community as well as a campus resource. His reasons focused on how the community could be involved with the writing center while my reasons focus on how the writing center can be involved with the community. In becoming a community resource, our center serves to demystify academe both for those in the community who feel they are too old or incapable to succeed in college and for young writers in high school who may not have decided to attend college yet. As a result, we are acquiring something of a reputation for helping students and community members with résumé cover letters and creative writing projects as well as scholarship letters and essays.University Writing Cente

Community Foundations: Building a New South Africa Through Community Philanthropy and Community Development

This report by the Mott Foundation examines start-up and development strategies for community philanthropy and community development foundations in South Africa

Building a Community of Christ in a Mathematics Classroom

The prevalence of mathematics anxiety and math phobia is an accepted phenomenon in our culture today (Boaler, 2013; Kimball & Smith, 2013). Multiple research studies have been conducted investigating the levels of mathematics anxiety present in both preservice and in-service elementary education teachers (Bekdemir, 2010; Mizala, Martínez, & Martínez, 2015). This article describes how the creation of a learning community within a two-course sequence of mathematics content courses for elementary teachers addressed the fears and anxieties of a cohort of prospective female teachers. The learning community was founded on three perspectives: Palmer’s (1989) community of truth, Paul’s description of the church as a human body in 1 Corinthians 12, and Jolliff’s (2009) reinterpretation of Guthrie’s (1963) lonesome valley experience by a solitary traveler. Themes expressed by the students in their reflections after the second course included greater conceptual understanding, an emphasis on both individual and community learning, reduced anxiety, attention to multiple perspectives, and the ability to learn as both a teacher and a student

Building bridges - seeking collaboration with a Maori community

The context for this thesis is the pressing need to help mainstream schools become more proactive and culturally responsive in how they engage with the whānau of their Māori pupils. The thesis examines how the author, a facilitator within the Te Kotahitanga Professional Development project, established a responsive and dialogic relationship with a local Māori community, so that the school could more fully support the educational achievements of its Māori students in mainstream classes. She explored ways to build “educationally powerful connections” with whānau. Initially, there was little interaction with Māori families through the traditional formats that this school was employing. She describes her personal journey of learning to engage with whānau members outside of the school context, and to work collaboratively with them to find more effective solutions. In the first part of the thesis the author examines literature which helps to understand important differences between Pākehā and Māori ‘World Views’, and the reluctance that many Māori feel to engage with Pākehā institutions. She documents how she and whānau members, working together, identified contexts and cultural processes (tikanga) that enabled this collaborative research project to proceed in a culturally responsive way. In the second part of the thesis the author examines the particular culturally-grounded learning events and experiences that she encountered along the way. Concurrently with this identification and reporting of events and experiences, she reflects on how these events and experiences impacted on her professional practice, and on her professional and personal identities. The author also considers what implications her collaborative research journey with Māori colleagues and friends and learning might have for school leaders and whānau members in other schools. Throughout the thesis, the author sustains a metaphor of bridge building. This metaphor helps to appreciate how, although starting from quite different cultural locations and positions at either end of the bridge, members of both cultures were able to meet in the middle and find respectful and trusting ways of working together

Early Childhood Systems Building from a Community Perspective

Even when children and their families have access to support services from a variety of programs and organizations -- such as early learning centers, nutrition programs, and pediatric, nursing, dental and mental health care providers -- there are challenges in connecting families to these services. The result is that families often have a difficult time learning about, applying for and taking advantage of the services that could benefit their children. This Issue Brief, prepared for The Colorado Trust by Julia Coffman of the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Susan Parker of Clear Thinking Communications, explains systems building as an intentional, organized way to create or improve a system of early care and education services for children

Building a learning community in first-year class

Those of us who enjoy the interactive lecture technique as well as class activities that do not involve chalk and talk from the professor face a challenge when we enter that first class of the first year introductory history course. Apart from the serried ranks of unknown faces, there is usually a deathly silence. Efforts to create a learning community where even the instructor can be accepted as a well-informed participant seem to require new approaches with every class and still work better in some years than in others. In the ideal learning community, every student, and the professor, would feel at ease and accepted within the class environment

Building Community Assets: A Guide to Credit Union Partnerships

The purpose of this guide is to help community organizations enable their members to join a mainstream credit union and begin building modest assets. Many credit unions offer financial products and services tailored to the needs of low-income people, but mainstream credit unions have not historically reached this population. Partnering with community organizations expands a credit union's membership while giving community organizations the tools to help their members build assets

Building a “community co-operative” at Hill Holt Wood

This article documents the business history of Hill Holt Wood (HHW), a community-run social enterprise based in rural Lincolnshire. It aims to shed light on the issues and obstacles associated with developing a rural enterprise into a ‘community co-operative’ (Somerville, 2007). To this end, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the venture’s founder over a period of approximately five years. It was found that the motivation and persistence of the founder, in addition to key support networks that can be drawn upon when required, were critical to the success of this community-controlled enterprise. The article concludes with a discussion of the future prospects for HHW and similar ‘community co-operatives’