IN THIS ISSUE:
*Events
*Volunteer Opportunities
*Internships, Jobs, and Beyond...
*In the Spotlight: Peer Health Exchange: Training College Students, Empowering at-risk Youth
EVENTS
STRIVE Information Sessions
Wednesday, May 6
7:00pm – 8:30pm
Harper Memorial: Room 140
STRIVE is a unique intervention for teens with sickle cell disease. Undergraduate mentors provide one-to-one mentoring/peer support, disease management education and academic support to teens at-risk for poor academic achievement and social/behavioral problems due to frequent hospitalizations. Learn more about STRIVE and how to apply at this informational session.
Role of Free Speech on Campus
Friday, May 8
Noon-1:30pm
Social Science Research Building, Room 122 (1126 E. 59th Street)
Please join Provost Thomas Rosenbaum and faculty for a discussion on the role of free speech on campus. They will explore issues related to creating and sustaining an environment that allows for open, rigorous, and intense intellectual inquiry and debate, while fostering civil discourse both on campus and in the classroom.
Walk for Peace in Humboldt Park
Saturday, May 9
10:00am-2:00pm
Clemente High School (1147 North Western)
Humboldt Park organizations celebrate safer communities, safer schools, and safer homes! Immediately following the walk will be a Celebration of Peace until 2:00 pm at the Humboldt Park Boat House. The Celebration will include free food, performances, music, games, resources and much more.
A Marathon Reading of Les Miserables
May 14 - May 16
24 hours!!
Regenstein Library and the Quads
From May 14 - 16, students, faculty, and friends will read Les Miserables as a chance to reflect on the morals and values of our society. The event is open to all levels of French speakers (Note: French 201-205 will receive extra-credit toward their coursework). The readinig will attempt to raise money for an organization that helps combat the misery that author Victor Hugo experienced.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
Help raise community awareness on the issues of Sexual and Domestic Violence. Join the YWCA at their Francis Center (6600 S. Cottage Grove Ave.) in May and June for Informational Saturdays where the group will be walking through the community with program information. Interested volunteers should contact Elspeth at the UCSC at
emcgarvey@uchicago.edu.
Share your paper writing skills! A student from a City College is
looking for assistance with a persuasive final paper. She is willing
to meet you on campus. Anyone interested in helping should contact
Elspeth ASAP at emcgarvey@uchicago.edu.
Soundscapes/Devon: Collaborative Audiowalk in an Immigrant Neighborhood of Chicago
The University of Chicago and the Indo-American Center are facilitating a community-driven effort to create an artistic, educational, widely-disseminable portrait of Devon Avenue. This project may be of interest to students and teachers who want to explore firsthand how an organization that would like to serve a new community takes root in that community, as well those interested in music, sound art, or service-learning. Interested individuals may contact Currun Singh at 773-702-8635 or currun@uchicago.edu for more information or to find out how to get involved.
Screening and Workshops around Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath
This spring, the University of Chicago will host a two-day series of screenings and workshops around the newly-released film Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath, which explores hate and healing in America post-9/11. Screenings and Q&A will be held for middle and high school students and the public, with reflective discussions, interfaith dialogues, and oral history trainings to follow for those interested in communities across Chicago. If you would like to bring the film and a workshop to your community, school, classroom, etc., please let us know and we will do our best to make it happen. Interested individuals may contact Currun Singh at 773-702-8635 or currun@uchicago.edu for more information or to find out how to get involved.
INTERNSHIPS, JOBS, AND BEYOND...
2 Rhodes, a Marshall and a Churchill…
A panel discussion on British scholarships on Tuesday, May 12th at 7pm in Harper 284. Open Hour with Maria Cecire (AB ’06, Rhodes 2005) will be Wednesday, May 13th at 10-11am in Harper 286 and a final British Scholarship information session at 2-3pm in Harper 284.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Peer Health Exchange: Training College Students, Empowering at-risk Youth
Mutisya Leonard
In Chicago, one in six high school aged teenagers is overweight, one in four binge drinks, one in four smokes, and one in five sexually active teenage girls becomes pregnant each year. One in five teenagers experiences violence in a dating relationship.
Across most of the United States, and more severely in urban settings experiencing significant racial and economic segregation, public school health efforts are underfunded, and understaffed. Students attending most of these schools live in precarious settings, experience a disproportionate number of health risks, often with little information on the health and legal implications of their everyday decisions. Further, wherever health curricula does occur, the programs often promote abstinence-only and moralized advice that’s informative and precautionary but heavily biased in preferring certain behavior patterns.
Recent budget cuts exacerbate the crisis, leaving even more teenagers unprepared to protect themselves against health risks. At-risk youth are more vulnerable, often harming themselves, and hurting their futures, and they are less likely to excel in school, or obtain gainful employment.
Peer Health Exchange, a national non-profit working with high schools serving economically disadvantaged majority minority populations, works to identify, recruit and train college volunteers to teach ninth-grade class sets in these schools the knowledge and skills needed to make healthy decisions. PHE covers wide-ranging topic areas – from substance abuse to nutrition and physical activity, contraception, to rape and sexual assault.
Since its founding in 2003, PHE has trained at least 1,500 college student volunteers representing 20 college sites across the nation, to deliver effective health education to 15,000 ninth-graders in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and the Bay Area. PHE was adopted as a Community Service RSO at University of Chicago last year, and in the year 40 college volunteers taught at least 500 students in Kenwood Academy, Dyett High School and Harper High School. This year, Robeson High School was added on.
In reporting the impact of PHE’s work in Chicago’s South Side, 2008-2009 co-coordinators, Josh Liss, a fourth year in the College, and Nora Vallerini, a third year in the College, announced that on a survey taken by high school student at the end of the year’s teaching, “90% of teenagers reported that they intend to use information learned in making decisions about their health in the future, while 57% said they had already used something they learned from PHE workshops to make a healthy decision during the six months the program ran. Additionally, high school students made statistically significant increases in their health knowledge, with a 21% improvement from Pre-Test to Post-Test.”
In the classroom, students are guided to articulate their values and goals, they learn basic, accurate health information, discuss attitudes and perceptions of peer norms and peer pressure, analyze the influence of culture and the media on health, discuss barriers to healthy behaviors and strategies to overcome them, and identify how one can use health resources in their communities. PHE volunteers help students practice skills such as effective communication, risk evaluation and prevention, limit-setting, and decision-making in role-plays that resemble challenging, real-life situations. By applying the skills they learn in PHE workshops outside of the classroom, PHE high school students can make informed decisions that will help them become responsible, accountable adults capable of leading healthy families.
According to Chicago Chief Executive Madeline Kerner, “74% of high school students say that having college student volunteer lead workshops helped them learn about health topics more enthusiastically.” “As slightly older peers,” Kerner continues, “PHE volunteers provide the benefits of peer education while also commanding the advantages of traditional instruction. They deliver health information to teenagers in a language and context that is relevant to their everyday experiences, yet they can also serve as role models, demonstrating healthy behaviors and the successful transition from high school to college.”
For many PHE volunteers, their experience in the classroom compels them to commit to public service jobs, and volunteer work. 90% of past PHE volunteers surveyed nationally say that their experience with PHE altered their career, academic and volunteer goals in lasting, meaningful ways. Volunteers typically plan to go on to service careers in teaching, medicine, public interest law, and policymaking.
The University Community Service Center (UCSC) fosters the development of civic-minded students by providing substantive community service opportunities through community partnerships based on mutual trust and respect. If you have questions - how to get involved as a student or how to connect to students as a community organization - please contact us.
University Community Service Center
5525 S. Ellis Ave., Suite 160
Chicago IL, 60637
Tel: 773.753.4483
Fax: 773.834.1160
ucsc.uchicago.edu
