Thursday morning, 30 students and faculty members of the School of Social Policy & Practice entered the lobby of the Caster Building to learn about the school’s newest service project.
SP2 students and faculty can now participate in the recently announced service project, SP2 Community Teamworks. This pilot program, inspired by Goldman Sachs’ Community Teamworks, further integrates Penn into West Philadelphia.
Though many Penn volunteer programs already exist in the area, second-year SP2 student Leah Markowitz said “working in West Philadelphia is a good population to start off with.”
Goldman Sachs — the program’s model — continues to see local and global successes in its 15-year Community Teamworks initiative. In this time, it has taught business courses to women in communities around the globe, assisted 450 disabled and special needs people in Taipei and even painted a mural, built two homes and two parks and worked in a soup kitchen in Philadelphia.
While the impact of Penn’s adaptation of Goldman Sachs’ program has yet to be discovered, organizers feel that SP2 CTW’s future as not only an SP2 specific program, but also as a University-wide effort, looks promising. “We are only open to SP2 students now, but we are considering opening it to other schools soon,” said Laura Nickrosz, the chief of staff for the dean’s office at SP2.
CTW organizes staff, alumni, administrators and students alike into teams. By December, each team will nominate a project or organization where they will volunteer their time. These opportunities will go into effect from March to April of 2012.
At the official announcement in the Caster Building, Nickrosz and SP2 Dean Richard J. Gelles lauded the template from which they based CTW and extolled the often unsung service work done by the school’s students. “Students are out there embodying community service on a daily basis, and it’s important to foster the relationship with West Philly,” Nickrosz said. While speaking to the audience, she emphasized the continued importance of building community within and beyond Penn.
As the presentation concluded, students and faculty mingled, discussing their interest in creating teams and their mutual excitement about the plethora of potential volunteer opportunities. In addition to hoping that CTW will launch more team-oriented volunteering, Gelles said he wants this project to bring to light the community service work of SP2 students — they currently log 250,000 hours of community service each year, he said.
This article was updated from its original version to reflect that SP2 students put in 250,000 hours of community service annually, not 150,000. Laura Nickrosz’s title was also updated to reflect her correct position.
