IUPUI Office of Neighborhood Resources Project Examples

In the fall, 1998 IUPUI faculty and staff donated season tickets to IUPUI athletic events to the
  Office of Neighborhood Resources for distribution to the Near Westside community.
Neighborhood Resources donated the tickets to various organizations in the Near Westside including the Westside Cooperative Organization (WESCO), Hawthorne Community Center, Christamore House, Weed & Seed, and the Atkins Boys & Girls Club. Several of the organizations took groups of neighborhood children to different sporting events. The Program Coordinator at Weed & Seed regularly took a group of youth from the community to the IUPUI basketball games.
ONR, in collaboration with the IUPUI Center for Public Service coordinated service projects at
  local community organizations to celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday and the IUPUI/United
Way Day of Caring. On Martin Luther King Day 60 students, staff, and faculty volunteered their time cleaning, painting, tearing down walls and working with community children at 4 local community organizations. A campus wide effort to make King’s Birthday a day “on” rather than a day “off” included a breakfast celebration, service projects, a diversity basketball clinic for local children and basketball game, and a dinner celebration. On the IUPUI/United Way Day of Caring 180 students,
faculty, and staff worked at 10 community sites doing such activities as painting, cleaning, picking up trash, recycling paint, and making fabric teddy bears for Alzheimer’s patients and traumatized children.
In April, 1999 the Office of Neighborhood Resources coordinated a fieldtrip to the Eiteljorg
  Museum for the children of the Stringtown after school program. Many of the children attending the fieldtrip had little or no experiences with museums. The Eiteljorg is a premiere museum of American Indians and Western Art located in the heart of downtown Indianapolis.
The Office of Neighborhood Resources assisted the Westside Cooperative Organization (WESCO)
  in providing Spanish/English classes to community residents by helping them access the services of the IUPUI Community Learning Network. The purpose of the classes was to improve communication between the English speaking and Spanish speaking residents. WESCO worked with the IUPUI Community Learning Network in developing
Spanish/English classes that took place in the community and included cultural awareness activities.
The Office of Neighborhood Resources brokered a relationship between the Asante Children’s
  Theatre and IUPUI campus resources including, the Communications Office. Asante is a youth based cultural arts organization whose focus, through the dramatic arts, is on education, enlightenment, and empowerment. Asante needed assistance with PR because they were so busy with the day to day fundamentals of working with the youth, rehearsals, touring, and productions that they had little time left for anything else. The IUPUI Communications Office developed a PR handbook for use by the Asante Children’s Theatre. This initial resource guide for Asante was eventually developed into a more general campus resource/PR guide to be distributed and used by other small arts organizations around the city of Indianapolis.
The Office of Neighborhood Resources coordinated internships for the Indiana University Center on
  Philanthropy’s new undergraduate Institute on Philanthropy and Voluntary Service. The Institute was designed for the growing number of students who are involved with tutoring, mentoring, and other kinds of voluntary service on campus an in their communities, and who may be interested in learning more about the philanthropic tradition and its moral and ethical underpinnings. The Institute will give students a chance to enhance their leadership skills and identify opportunities for careers in public or community service. Each student will receive 6 hours of credit for participation in the Institute. As part of the Institute students are required to participate in five week internship with a local non-profit community organization.
America Reads is an initiative set forth from President Clinton's "Call to American Education" to
  have all elementary students reading at a grade level by the third grade. The program was developed out of a concern for the large number of young people who are currently struggling without basic
reading skills. In a 1994 national assessment 44% of all fourth graders failed to read at grade level. America Reads encourages colleges and universities to place federal work-study students in the community as reading tutors to work with children in preschool through 6th grade. Student tutors work with children both one on one and in small group settings on a variety of educational activities to help students improve
their reading and writing skills. By providing elementary students with individualized attention and tutoring, along with parental involvement and quality school instruction, the program strives to improve reading levels among participating students. IUPUI signed on to the America Reads Challenge in the spring, 1997. Since the inception of America Reads at IUPUI in the fall,1997, the program has more than doubled in size. During 1997/98 school year 35 tutors were placed in 8 community sites. In 1998/99 the program increased to 75 tutors at 10 sites. In 1998/99 academic year alone the tutors have provided 10,000 hours of serve to the community. (See also Featured Project)
Campus 'Jams the Bus' With Thanksgiving Spirit
  Thanksgiving and the spirit of sharing came early to the IUPUI campus this fall through IUPUI's wildly successful "Jam the Jaguars' Bus" food drive. The drive, which involved every corner of the campus and 10 Indianapolis shelters and food banks, gave people around the IUPUI campus an opportunity to share a little extra food and brighten the holidays of people and families in need of a helping hand. "IUPUI's donation was one of the largest donations from a food drive that we have gotten this year," said David Breman, director of community development for Wheeler Mission. Wheeler Mission was just one of the 10
different shelters and food banks that reaped the harvest of IUPUI's first campuswide "Jam the Jaguars' Bus" effort. Before students, staff and faculty headed home to stuff themselves with turkey for Thanksgiving, they took the time to stuff a 40-foot-long city bus -not to mention four more vans- full of food for the hungry. "I was thrilled with the support from IUPUI's faculty, staff, and students," said Kelly Young, director of Community Outreach and organizer of the event. "The donations far exceeded my expectations."
 
 

Bus was filled
Thanks to donations from more than 65 schools and organizations across campus, student and staff volunteers were able to completely fill the Jaguar IndyGo bus with everything from canned corn to shampoo. Filling a bus that large was no easy task. But campus organizations and offices used their creativity to motivate students, faculty and staff to bring food. The IUPUI Athletics Department offered free admission to exhibition games for canned food items and collected more than 1,000 pounds of food. The IUPUI Bookstore gave a 25-percent discount to customers. The financial aid office let staff members dress down in exchange for cans. Publishing Document and Distribution Services even offered one minute of off for each item donated. "I wanted to make something fun out of it, so I came up with the one-minute-per item plan," said Joe Sparks, the associate director of PDDS. The largest PDDS donation was 80 items of food, but he said the average was 15-to-20 items per person.

 

Students join the fun
Students got serious about the food drive, as well, contributing more than 1,800 pounds of food. Michael Coatney of the Honors Program decided to make a "food pyramid" of all of the items donated by students; the pyramid stood in University College for more than a week, growing bigger each day. It even warranted a visit by Treeboy from WTHR-TV (Channel 13). Student Life and Diversity Programs offered a pizza party for the student organization that brought in the most food, but participation was so large they decided to hold a party for all of the groups. On the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving, the IndyGo bus made its way across campus, carrying student and staff volunteers to load up. "The best part of the drive was the sense of campus spirit and pride we generated reaching out to the community", said Young.

 
  Plenty of stories
Good news stories abound. The School of Dentistry, for example, collected more than $300, which it donated to Wheeler Mission in addition to its many boxes of food. After the bus could be filled no more, it headed off to shelters all across the city. Original destinations included the Hawthorne Community Center, Gleaners Food Bank and Wheeler Mission, but the campus response was so overwhelming that
  several other shelters also received food. They included: Damien Center, the Julian Center, the Daysprings Center, Lighthouse Mission, Christamore House, Washington St. Presbyterian Church, Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, and Christ Emannuel Missionary Baptist Church. Workers and patrons of the shelters were as touched by the generosity of the campus as by the amount of food. "While we were at the Damien Center, one of the volunteers thanked us profusely for the donation and told us that they aren't always on the top of the list for donations," explained Young. Berman estimated that IUPUI brought one ton of food to Wheeler Mission, but said most of that food would probably be gone in a matter of days. "Our food pantry needs are considerably higher than normal around the holidays," he said, adding that 1999 also has been an off year for donations. Now that the campus has seen the impact that it can have on the community, Young hopes that drive will have an even greater impact next year. "IUPUI truly made a difference in the community through the 'Jam the Jaguars' Bus' food drive," Young said. "If we were able to fill one city bus this year, just think of what we can do next year."