Overview
KIDS Consortium collaborates with organizations to offer special programs and projects connected to our core service-learning work. Initiatives change from time to time, check back often to learn how to get involved with service-learning.
The Student Summit is a two-day annual event. Each year, over 300 students from across New England gather to share their service-learning projects, learn about issues in other communities, develop new leadership skills, and discover that they are making a difference in the world.
In 2009-2010 we are funding 35 groups of students from across the Northeast who are implementing "Green" service-learning projects. Grantees will attend our Student Summit in May.
Project Citizen integrates civics, explorations of public policy and service-learning, making it the perfect vehicle for students to demonstrate the 2007 Maine Learning Results - Social Studies standards. KIDS Consortium is the statewide coordinator of Project Citizen in Maine. We offer educator trainings and on-going support.
Through the “Youth as Citizen Scientists” initiative, middle level students will explore environmental and health issues and needs in their schools and, with guidance from their teachers, identify a problem they want to solve. KIDS Consortium is collaborating closely with the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) educators from around the Northeast.
Expanding service-learning opportunities for K-12 students throughout the six New England states is the primary objective of this significant three-year initiative supported by the Learn and Serve America Program of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Reducing underage drinking and substance abuse was the focus of a three-year (2006-2008) project with the Maine Office of Substance Abuse Prevention and three partner school districts – Millinocket, Mount Desert Island, and Westbrook Public Schools. The initiative engaged hundred of students in these communities in service-learning projects and improved collaboration and coordination between schools and community-based health organizations related to prevention.
For four years (2003 to 2007), KIDS Consortium was privileged to work with the Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island Departments of Education and Professor Marcus Bruce of Bates College on a special project designed to help middle and high school social studies integrate service-learning into their history and civics classes. The initiative engaged thousands of students in extraordinary projects and provided participating educators with rich and rewarding professional development opportunities around the New England region.
KIDS Consortium was honored to be part of a three-year initiative with the Choices Program at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and a team from Indiana about the integration of international and civic education. KIDS Consortium was particularly interested in exploring the connections between international education and service-learning.
You see, I believe wholeheartedly in service-learning as an educational model and practice. Service-learning became an academic way of life for me. It was the spark that created many wonderful teaching (and learning) moments, and it changed my outlook. Some of my best adventures were within service-learning activities. The energy generated, and the lessons learned by the children (and by me-from them) is why we did different projects year after year. In these days of low budget/no budget programs, and the need for authentic educational experiences (regardless of individual levels of academic readiness and functioning), our children need to feel that what they do matters. It's a wonderful way to introduce community inter-connectedness to students. Economic levels and multicultural backgrounds are not barriers to success when using your model of service-learning. 