UVSE Fellowship Overview
The *Class of 1982 Upper Valley Social Entrepreneur Fellowship* supports a Dartmouth undergraduate who will devote full time work in one leave-term and part-time work in several academic terms to working with an Upper Valley non-profit organization on social entrepreneurial ventures. Each fellow is selected based on their grant application which presents a plan for innovative and sustainable change in the way the organization serves the local community. This all falls under the umbrella of the Tucker Foundation, whose mission is to help students develop to be "Ethical Leaders and Responsible Citizens" during their four years at Dartmouth.
Brian's Fellowship Project Overview
As the first recipient of the Upper Valley Social Entrepreneurial Fellowship funded by the Dartmouth Class of '82, I am working for DREAM as the the first ever Community Liaison. DREAM is a student-led non-profit 501(c)3 mentoring organization that matches college students with youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Vermont. Having been a DREAM mentor for three years and co-chair of the program for about a year, I became aware that one of the biggest issues DREAM has trouble with is that our mentoring efforts have been almost exclusively focused on the children without engaging and reaching out to their parents', who ultimately have the biggest impact on their children's lives. I've therefore started the position of Community Liaison, whose fundamental responsibility is to serve as a liaison for the parents in the communities. By improving parents' access to existing resources which allow them to increase their financial stability and parenting skills, and by facilitating communication between parents and child's mentor, DREAM is better able to make more long-term impact on the children's lives.
I have four specific action plan components of my project. First, I've installed two new computer systems in each of the community centers, to allow everyone in the community, especially parents, access to e-mail, the DREAM Google Calendar, and the infinite ability of the web to network, job search, and troubleshoot daily problems. A second component of my project has been starting up weekly parent meetings in each of the communities. Meetings focus on DREAM's role in the community and how it can be improved, on various community issues such as recycling and proper use of the community center, and often incorporate programs or speakers that give presentations targeted toward needs of the community. The third component of my project involves meeting individually with each parent at least once a week in order to address individual concerns, ranging from financial difficulties to specific problems with their kids, and offering referrals when appropriate. The final component of my project involves simply facilitating the communication between each parent and their child's mentor in order to ensure that each mentor is working in conjunction with individual parents' efforts and disciplinary systems, which allows our mentoring efforts to be much more effective.
Update #3
I’m now a full three weeks into my full-time fellowship and things are going real well. It's been a great experience to be living in the community and interacting with parents & kids all the time. We've had two weekly parent meetings so far, and the next two weeks are lined up with an internet safety specialist coming in this week and a parent educator coming in the week after to lead discussion workshops. So far I've gotten really good feedback from parents about the utility of the meetings, and parents have said that DREAM is definitely getting better on the communication front. Computer maintenance has been definitely more of a headache than I imagined, but things are chugging along. I've also almost closed a deal with ComCast whereby they'll be sponsoring / subsidizing high-speed internet for the long-term and we can stop borrowing a signal from nearby. I've been working really closely with a few parents, but am definitely struggling with trying to engage all parents and manage my time most effectively. As far as connecting parents to resources, it's definitely been a work in progress as there's a wide range of awareness about the available services. I also learned first hand this week why parents reported car repair issues as a primary concern, and was fortunate to have a few residents take a look at my own care with me to help me figure out what was wrong.
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