HSU aims $25,000 at food security

AmeriCorps grant to help meet "community identified needs"

Paul Mann, Humboldt State University
10/8/09

Arcata

Humboldt State University’s Service Learning Center will collaborate with community partners on green initiatives and food security via a $25,000 grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency responsible for AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America programs, through the California Campus Compact.

The compact is designed to build collective commitment and capacity of colleges and universities throughout the state to advance civic and community engagement for a “healthy, just and democratic society.”

The Service Learning Center will join together with a full roster of Humboldt community and campus partnerships, which are based on helping to meet community-identified needs. Some of these partnerships include Eureka city schools, Food for People, local community garden projects, Redwood Community Action Agency, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers’ Farm-to-School Program and many others. Each partnership will have its own unique outcomes, intended to foster a commitment to increasing social and environmental responsibility.

Humboldt State is one of six California colleges selected for the $25,000 grant in connection with Social Innovation Generation (SIG), the California Campus Compact’s three-year initiative to aid the state’s economic recovery and renewal through institutions of higher learning that offer service-learning programs and inventive solutions to social problems.

The six-campus collaboration spans green-collar job training, inner city microfinance and entrepreneurialism and student-led projects, among other ventures across the state.

HSU’s Service Learning Center enables students to link academic content with direct service projects that equip them with practical experience while meeting local needs. The center supports faculty implementing service learning classes on campus, and helps find community connections that foster student civic engagement and provide a framework for engagement in issues of social and environmental justice