Community Impacts of Service-Learning, (The)

 It is hard to find a discussion of service-learning that does not include numerous references to the term “community.” We are often told that service-learning combines community service and academic achievement, and that it produces positive impacts upon participating young people, the institutions where they are taught, and the community as a whole. The centrality of community to service-learning is codified in places like Massachusetts where the program is described as “community service-learning” or CSL.

 The annual NYLC Growing to Greatness reports and much of the formal service-learning research literature havedocumented numerous benefits for the young people who provide the service. But there has been surprisingly littlesystematic attention to the other half of the equation — addressing what community really means in this context, andfew rigorous efforts to define and measure the difference service-learning makes for the people served. For example,should community refer to something that is defined from within (by people who feel they share a common space oridentity) or by outsiders? Should the definition be limited to geographically defined spaces or should it also includegroups of people who see themselves as sharing important common attributes other than where they live or work? This article will begin to fill this gap by laying out the issues involved, and by using the research literature and the experiences of a high-profile service-learning/community engagement project being carried out by the YMCA of the USA to begin to answer these questions.