Community Bridges recruiting fellows

By Sana Yaklur     9/17/14 5:34pm

Community Bridges, a service-learning fellowship program, is now looking to recruit fellows for the new year, according to Community Bridges Program Coordinator Kaitlyn Sisk.

The program is open to sophomores, juniors and seniors of all academic backgrounds, Sisk said.

Through this program, fellows can apply what they learn in the classroom to internships through non-profit organizations in the Fifth Ward, whose residents tend to be of a lower socioeconomic background, Sisk said.

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“Once fellows are accepted into the program, they go through a training in the fall semester that prepares them for the spring semester internships,” Sisk said. “In the spring semester, they take a sociology course [SOCI 470] on urban inequality so that they can take what they’re learning and apply it to their internships through our partnered non-profit organizations.”

Fellows learn about the theory on community building through SOCI 470 and learn about the application of what they learn in that class, especially the challenges of applying those more theoretical ideas, through their internships.

At the end of the semester, the fellows have to come up with a sustainable project that works towards the needs of their partner organizations and the Fifth Ward community as seen by its residents.

Currently, Community Bridges is partnered with 10 non-profit organizations: Covenant Community Capital, Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, Fifth Ward Enrichment Program, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Small Steps Nurturing Center, YES Prep Fifth Ward, CAN DO Houston, School Literacy and Culture Project, Executive Personnel Staffing Inc. and Cane River Gardens. Internships are formed based on these organizations’ needs.

Last year, Community Bridges expanded from 20 fellows to 40 fellows after gaining the support of more partnered nonprofit organizations. Before last year, the program partnered with six organizations, but it expanded and currently partners with 10 organizations.

The program offers a large variety of internships to its fellows, according to Sisk. Internships include teaching middle schoolers through YES Prep, helping with grant writing through Cane River Gardens and teaching Zumba courses through CAN DO Houston. According to Sisk, one of the internships this year is looking for an architecture student to build a greenhouse.

Students apply to the internships through the Community Bridges application and are then matched to a particular internship, according to Sisk.

“I try to match [students] up as well as possible so that [the] experience is positive for the student and the partner organization,” Sisk said.

Ultimately, the program aims to be more than just an internship.

“[Community Bridges is] designed so that students can learn more about the Fifth Ward and about urban inequality and poverty in general, while also working with the community to create positive social change,” Sisk said.

The application for the program opened on Monday, Sept. 15, and is available at kinder.rice.edu/bridges.

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