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Cape Town students are expected to:
- Participate in community engaged learning in Cape Town. Students can expect to spend approximately 15 to 20 hours a week within the community.
- Enroll in the related, reflection seminar: OSPCPTWN 070: Youth Citizenship and Community (5 units).
Community Engaged Learning Through Partnership
Our community engaged learning program embodies a partnership approach, which might be very different from other approaches that students have encountered on campus and elsewhere. Community engagement guided by partnership means that:
- Our organizational partners are diverse, ranging from large non-governmental organizations to grassroots community organizations. Our partners work in a wide range of sectors, including public health, education, food security, and micro-finance.
- Stanford has a partnership with each of our community organizations based on principles of reciprocity and mutual learning. Students have the opportunity to build a personal relationship with our partners, which complements the existing—and ongoing—institutional one. Given the vulnerability of the development sector in South Africa, we work with organizations and communities in a manner that respects the challenges they face.
- We work with our partners to design service placements that are beneficial to the organization, to organizational staff, and to community constituents. Students will slot into placements that are best aligned to their interests and capabilities.
- We do try to place students in a sector in which they are interested, but this might not always be the case. Unlike other programs or internships students might have been involved in previously, Cape Town values the organization’s requirements as well as the students’ academic interests.
- Students are encouraged to view their participation in Stanford’s community engagement program as part of a collective and continuing effort by Stanford students to contribute to an organization or community.
- Students can expect to get involved in any and every aspect of an organization’s operations: from refereeing an afternoon paper-plane competition, running a meditation class for HIV+ women, planting veggies in a community garden, to making tea, taking minutes at meetings, organizing files or designing websites.
Once you’ve read and understood the above, please review our partner organizations page.
