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ChangeEducate

Vital Stats

Faith V

Durham, NC

people helped60
People Doing It19

The Problem

President John Kennedy so famously challenged the nation in his inaugural address, asking not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. Since then, both Democrats and Republicans have worked to generate countless service programs. Most recently, in President Obama’s presidential campaign, he emphasized the need and benefits of service learning in classroom. This past December, congress approved a historical budget increase for youth national service. This national emphasis and toted benefits have caused a surge in service learning programs in schools across the country. At the same time, the addition of service learning usually is adopted by implementing mandatory volunteer hours for students. Despite the millions of dollars spent on these programs, most students are still unaware of what exactly poverty is, including the causes and perpetuators. Furthermore, students have limited awareness of development solutions and social entrepreneurship, and believe the only ways they can alleviate poverty are by fundraising or volunteering.

Plan of Action

ChangeEducate is a non-profit initiative that seeks to educate students on poverty and provide them a chance to develop and implement solutions to alleviate poverty. We have designed a DVD-based curriculum that will be distributed to middle school and high school classrooms around the United States. This three faceted curriculum includes the DVD, lesson plans, and an interactive website. Our goal is to inspire students to utilize their talents and passions towards creating projects that have tangible impact on their communities. There is currently no such national curriculum that educates students about what poverty is, or what they can do about it. This curriculum is also multi-faceted, exposing students to non-traditional digital platform teaching environments and social media as a means of promoting social entrepreneurship. We, a group of Duke undergraduate students and alumni, are creating a project called ChangeEducate to provide students with a chance to learn about and change their communities. ChangeEducate will be filling a void that teachers see in their students’ education while also making service learning meaningful and impactful.