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Happy World Kindness Day 2017!

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World Kindness Day was first introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement. Since then, it has been observed on November 13th every year by dozens of countries. The mission of this day is promoting a Kinder World. Here in the Center for Community Engagement, we strive every day to promote positive social change and develop students who are “active citizens of enhanced character, sensitive to the needs of the community, competent and committed to their ability to contribute to a global society.”

Members of our office are individuals who promote this mission through their work, words, and actions. Here is what Kindness means to some of them.

“Kindness to me means having a disposition that shows that you have a concern for others. I think a society requires it to move forward in a positive way.”

-Charlie Whitaker, Project Coordinator-Media and Communication, CASL

“Appreciating others and showing love and respect.”

-Alex Johnson, Director of Community Involvement and Service

“Kindness to me means making a concerted effort to think of others in the way we act and use our words. We must show empathy. Kindness without empathy is an empty promise to make the world better.”

-Katy Warfield, Student Coordinator for Special Projects, CIS

“Caring about someone, doing something, having empathy, listening, and understanding. It’s all these things. It’s not a handout, but rather a hand up. It’s thinking of ways to make a positive impact and make a difference.”

-Dr. Kathy Nordyke, Director of Citizenship and Service-Learning

Sharing compassionate words. Serving at your local community garden. Adopting a family for the holidays. Recycling rather than trashing. Giving a smile to someone who needs it. Kindness has many forms and is not just for one day. Spread kindness & love every day and you may start to see some changes.

Now, what does Kindness mean to you?

Did you miss the Community Engagement Fair?

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Every semester, the Center for Community Engagement hosts dozens of community partners in the Plaster Student Union for the Community Engagement Fair. This past September, Missouri State welcomed 45 community partners to the third floor of Plaster Student Union. For those of you who couldn’t make it, we have a running list of possible community agencies to partner with in the coming year!

The theme of this list is Child Advocacy. Springfield has several challenges when it comes to Child Advocacy. The community faces high child abuse and neglect rates, child poverty, lacking school readiness, and poor preschool investment. Below are community agencies that are taking strides to address this community issue.

CASA of Southwest Missouri (Court Appointed Special Advocates):  CASA is a nonprofit organization that recruits, trains and supports community volunteers who assist the court in protecting the best interests of abused and neglected children in Southwest Missouri.

Girl Scouts:  They 2.6 million strong—1.8 million girls and 800,000 adults who believe in the power of every G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader)™ to change the world. We’re the preeminent leadership development organization for girls. Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.

Ambassadors for Children:  We provide quality services and support to neglected and abused children in our community. There are currently over 1,000 children in foster care in Greene, Christian, and Taney Counties with local child abuse rates continuing to be higher in comparison with the rest of the state. A4C’s programs work to provide essentials while fostering a sense of dignity and value in the children they serve.

FosterAdopt Connect:  Comprehensive Foster Care Advocacy Agency for children in care and the families caring for them. You don’t have to be a foster parent to serve this community partner! From serving with Sammy’s Window to event assistance, this agency strives to transform children’s lives.

The Doula Foundation:  Doula is a non-profit organization located in Springfield, MO. We assist mothers and their families before, during, and after pregnancy in Greene County and the surrounding areas. Doulas are experienced birth companions. They provide physical and emotional support before, during and after the birth. The word doula is Greek and means one who serves or “mothering the mother.” Childbirth education, prenatal yoga, parent classes, and breastfeeding support are some of the services Doula provides.

Missouri Mentoring Partnership:  Missouri Mentoring partnership prepares youth for personal success in employment, education, healthy life styles and self sufficiency through mentored support. You can invest in the life of pregnant and/or parenting youth. The program equips young people with the necessary tools for employment and self-sufficiency. Additionally, they can fund some educational costs such as GED testing, ACT tests, and college registration fees.

This is nowhere near an exhaustive list; however, it is a good start. Follow your passion and find your place in the Springfield community!

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more community partner lists! Next week- Education and Community Inclusion!

Volunteer Hours or Service Hours?

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I’ve worked in the CCE for one year plus six weeks to this point. Through the time spent in this office with the big green wall, I have shifted from being a student with some experience in volunteer work to an advocate for serving the community and the people that make it up.

I speak with students all the time about how they can get involved in Springfield and I can see it overwhelms them a bit. I know the look because I have made it several times. I remember making a similar face my freshman year as I sat through a mandatory meeting about volunteer hours for scholarships. I listened as there were countless ways to dive in listed off. It had never occurred to me that this community that I viewed as a temporary place of residence before I got my degree and got on with my life would have so much to offer in opportunities to learn and grow. I was overwhelmed because I thought these hours I had to complete would be painless, like much of the volunteer work I had done previously. Suddenly I was being encouraged to challenge myself and find a new passion!

Ignoring that challenge, I spent the majority of my first year looking for easy ways to find volunteer hours. I looked for on campus opportunities and one-time service days. I even applied to go on a Bear Breaks trip over Spring Break (mainly because I knew it would give me a lot of hours). That trip ended up being the best thing I did my entire freshman year as it is where I started to fall in love with service and the ability to build relationships through it.

I remember being overwhelmed during the trip when we were challenged to bring back our experience to make a difference in Springfield. I saw it as an insurmountable task, but I credit a beginning in my change in attitude to that trip. I started seeing solvable problems for the people in Springfield, rather than a laundry list of issues. I wasn’t completely cured of seeing these hours as a checkmark off my to-do list, but it would at least be a check mark I enjoyed.

In fact, I’m not sure I got over the to-do list mindset until I finished up the hours. After that, volunteer hours became service hours (a subtle but important difference). I started to serve at agencies where I felt there was a genuine need and the efforts were going toward an end goal that I was passionate about. And more importantly, instead of simply getting through the hours, I made efforts to learn from the community partners and fellow volunteers as I served next to them.

The point of all this is to challenge you to dive in. You could easily find volunteer hours or service hours around the Springfield area, but I encourage you to find the latter. If you ever need help, givepulse.com is chalk full of opportunities, and we would love to talk to you in the CCE. Just be warned, when you ask, “Where can I get service hours?” my response will not be, “There’s an opportunity in the PSU in two hours, but instead, “What do you enjoy doing?”

John Lang, Senior, Student Coordinator

My Year in the Center for Community Engagement: Always Striving for More

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The school year has finally come to an end after what feels like an eternity. I’ve taken my last final and can now focus on my final year of undergrad starting in the fall. Though I am beyond excited for what the next year has to offer, I think it is appropriate to reflect on the stressful, yet meaningful year that I have had working in the Center for Community Engagement.

After coordinating a Day of Service, Katy serves alongside Springfield Community Gardens.
CCE Student Coordinators John and Katy helped provide more than 5,100 meals through Stomp Out Hunger.
More than 60 community members and students joined Katy and the CCE crew for a documentary Screening about Abuse and Neglect Awareness.

I have had the privilege to collaborate on 13 community and campus-wide events focused on engaging and informing students and community members alike. Semester service days have encouraged over one thousand Missouri State students to meaningfully serve the Springfield Community. Over fifteen hundred pounds of shoes were collected in November for Stomp Out Hunger and provided over 5,000 meals for distribution through Friends Against Hunger. The spring and fall Community Engagement Fairs connected over 100 community partners to university students eager to serve the community. Three documentary screenings and panels have provided a powerful narrative on child abuse as well as homelessness and hunger for students, community members, and partners to grasp the cultural competencies required to empathize with the populations we strive serve effectively. Students completed over 35,000 approved service hours for scholarship and GEP classes since the beginning of the 2016 school year. These numbers make me proud. They quantify the hard work that we, as an office, have put into promoting an inspired campus culture focused on community engagement and service.

Yet, these accomplishments were only a fraction of the effort put out by our office students and staff. This doesn’t include the Vision Screening Program trip to Haiti, Nixa Alternative Court program office case workers, or the dozens of community agencies paired with students for the year’s service learning program. I could go on and on listing the achievements of the school year for the Center for Community Engagement; however, I have one project that I would especially love to highlight. It is not a community outreach program or a Zone Blitz project. It is not a documentary screening or donation drive.

The project that I am extremely proud of is the CCE’s work in redefining its vision, values, and mission statement. As an office, we have created a new focal point to reflect and better ourselves as a means to foster a more sustainable and reciprocal student-to-community network. The effort to fulfill our duty as a public affairs institution and as a representative of the Community Engagement pillar is made possible by the internal office motivation to strive to do more. More community talks. More students applying to Bear Breaks Immersion trips. More meaningful service performed. More open office environment inviting students to come in a feel more comfortable asking for help. More community agency partnerships.

This office has brought me friendships and mentorship from so many individuals that always look for more. It is an incredible environment to be in. My leadership and ability to take on responsibility has been tested and though I have made mistakes along the way, I always strive to do more. Community Engagement is more than just service hours and documentaries. It is about creating connection and meaning. Redefining our vision and how we achieve it is crucial to fulfilling our duty as Bears and citizen servant leaders.

The Public Affairs Conference: Not Just Another Talking Point

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Image result for msu public affairs flags

For me, walking from the PSU to Strong Hall can become monotonous. You look around, maybe make eye contact with a stranger, and spend the rest of the walk dwelling on how cold, or hot, or windy it is. But one week a semester, when the flags are flying, I have something to look at and think about. I look at almost 200 flags and think about how each represents a country full of people, just like me, who have a story to tell, just like me. If we had it my way, the flags would be out every week.

For full disclosure, I have not always considered Public Affairs a passion of mine. It was not one of the reasons I decided to come to Missouri State, and I certainly didn’t expect to be in the position I am now where I work with it on a daily basis.This is my sixth semester on campus and my third spring semester. With the spring semester, I instantly think of the Public Affairs Conference. What a privilege it is to go to a university that hosts a conference of this magnitude. I went to my first session two years ago during my freshman year to fulfill a requirement from a program. It was a panel discussing religion, rights, and where the line is drawn between the two. There was a panelist from a scholarly perspective and a panelist from foreign country offering a different perspective. I was surprised to find that there were two panelists who did not at all consider themselves to be experts in religion but instead who were engaged citizens with a story and a perspective unique to them. This Public Affairs Conference is full of experts, but the discussions take place in an effort to promote conversation and bridge gaps for those of us who are not experts.

I was given the opportunity this week to shuttle panelists from their hotel to the PSU for the conference. In the short drive across Springfield, I was able to learn about the conference from the perspective of a panelist returning for his second time. According to this panelist, the detail that separates this conference from other conferences around the nation is the fact that each panelist is hand picked. Speakers aren’t able to apply or register to speak this week; if they are here, they were chosen to be here. It also sticks out that when speakers are chosen and agree to come for our Public Affairs Conference, they have no idea what their topic will be. I love this because it doesn’t allow speakers to only speak on a topic where they may be the most comfortable. It gets the speakers out of their comfort zone a little bit, and as an audience member, you can feel this dynamic. The panelist sets the tone with this authenticity and the audience follows by engaging in an educated discussion.

In every session I have sat in on over these three years, whether the topic is Religion, Freedom of Choice, Sustainability, or Hunger and Poverty, there seems to be a common theme. The panelists give a statement that ranges from very informed to very passionate and opens it up to Q&A. Students and citizens ask questions looking for straight answers only to be disappointed when they are told there is no straight answer. Instead, these panelists engage in a discussion about circumstances, empathy, ethics, and self sufficiency.

There is a reason these speakers are chosen to be here. They’ve made an impact on this world in their chosen field. They are well versed, educated, and practiced. They may be authors, professors, physicians, or politicians, but I always leave reminded that they are people. They have opinions, values, morals, and stressors. They were once students who were unsure about their future, or young adults who made mistakes. They will tell you that they are just people who followed what they cared about, and treated people like people.

Public Affairs has taught me that the only thing separating us from making a change is a little bit more questioning, a lot more listening, and a fair share of humility. Meaningful conversations shouldn’t be limited to one week a semester, so I’m glad Missouri State does its best to facilitate these conversations.

I may not have come here for the Public Affairs Mission, but it certainly is one of my biggest takeaways. There’s always room for empathy, compassion, and dialogue, and those don’t have to stop when the flags come down.