A grant from the Alamance Community Foundation has been awarded to the Department of Human Service Studies to support the work of senior course.
Bud Warner, chair of the Department of Human Service Studies, has received a $5,000 grant from the Alamance Community Foundation to support the on-going work of his HSS 411 course, Designing and Assessing Human Service Programs.
Beginning in 2012 through a grant from the Learning By Giving Foundation, students in this coursework with local social service agencies in developing and writing grant proposals. Through funding from the Learning By Giving Foundation, Alamance County United Way, the Frueauff Foundation, and now the Alamance Community Foundation, students then become a funding board. After developing the proposals, students present their ideas to the class and listen to the proposals of their classmates. Following the Learning By Giving protocols, students must make difficult decisions about prioritizing and ultimately funding proposals.
To date, $63,000 has been added into the local social service network through this course, including grants to agencies such as Allied Churches, Boys and Girls Club, Family Abuse Services, Open Door Clinic, and Benevolence Farm.
“This grant allows us to continue to provide an intense experiential learning experience for our students”, said Warner. “The students are challenged to not just learn the technical aspects of writing a grant proposal, including the current focus on client outcomes, but must struggle to work collaboratively to reach consensus about which proposal to fund. This experience carries over into their life beyond Elon as active members of their communities.”