Serving Local Communities, Connecting to Global Consciousness

Creating Partnerships: The Community Partnership Model | A Comprehensive Notion of Service | Building the Organization's Capacity and Campus-wide Service | Testimonials

Well-developed community partnerships are essential for creating change within our local communities, nation, and even world. As Bonners, we are committed to serving together with our partners in long-term service positions. These relationships are intended to be intentional and reciprocal. Our campus programs develop a long term approach, working with key partners year after year.  This dedication to our partners promotes more significant change, resource development, and capacity building in our communities—as well as allows for personal and professional growth for each volunteer. Check out the descriptions below to understand the "big picture" of community partners.

Creating Partnerships: The Community Partnership Model

Bonner Programs strive to have deep, reciprocal relationships with their community partners that provide a spectrum of opportunities for volunteers at all levels. An ideal relationship would have a small group of Bonners and other campus volunteers simultaneously serving a site with different levels of responsibility according to their progress in the Student Development Model. See this Community Partnership diagram below for more details.

In this model, individual volunteers work in different capacities (as tutors, mentors, servers, health clinic specialists) in the Placement Model, but they can also be mutually responsible for building capacity of the organization through helping recruit other volunteers, coordinate projects, and even do planning in the Collaborative, Problem-Solving Model.

How does this translate into real service work for Bonners?  By the end of the first year (or semester), Bonners typically find a placement at the 'regular volunteer' level, meaning they carve out a role for several hours per week.  Most of the time, students are working in schools, in clinics, with youth programs, at agencies that serve the hungry and homeless, in parks, and so on.  At times, Bonners and other students might take roles as 'occasional volunteers,' which means they're involved in one-time or short-term service projects, such as a park clean-up, build, or other initiatives.  Over time, perhaps by the second or third year, a Bonner finds an issue, organization, and role she or he is committed to, and begins to take leadership.  The student might become a site leader, project coordinator, or even branch out into creating a new program area within the organization.  Finally, a student may take on a specialist role, often embraced as a member of the staff.  Here, the student might be doing related research projects, program development, and even planning for the agency.

A Comprehensive Notion of Service

So, you want to get out there, work with kids, youth, the elderly.  You want to mentor, nurture, coach, teach, build.  In the Bonner Program, students can do all kinds of service, and the hope and expectation is that over time your service grows as you do.  This is what we mean by the student development model. For example, you start as a tutor in a elementary school classroom.  In the second year, you stay in that classroom, but are given more responsibilities with planning and leading math and science curricula.  By your third year, the teacher and principal asks you to share your knowledge by also teaching other volunteers how to work well with students and share the curriculum across the school.  You start to get involved in other dimensions, like connecting the school with the national NASA curricula.  In your final year, you're not only helping to manage the school's volunteer program for math and science curricula, but you've also helped write a grant for it to continue, and you're working to add a family involvement strategy. You might even be linking this work to your honors thesis. To maintain those relationships with kids you care so much about, you're still teaching a few hours a week. The point is, your service work can change and evolve, matching your own personal and professional growth. The diagram below describes some of the various types of service projects that can happen.