Q: What are you up to this morning?

A: We’re doing a startup team building exercise called the “Human Knot”

Jim Addington Service Learning Program Mentor talks about the interns in the program, their commitment and their leadership

Megan______’s experience of the Service Learning Program for her continuing studies

Some Methods Skills & Enhanced Capacities involve analysis of complex situation, facilitation, using social media to communicate and engage, reflection on personal experiences and teamwork

Way back in the Summer of 1965…when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and more than 2,600 others arrested in Selma, Ala., during demonstrations against voter-registration rules earlier that year the idea of the Service Learning Program began at the Institute. Terry describes what happened next

In the video  clip, below Seva Gandhi, who leads the Service Learning Project at ICA-USA, shows shows some recent work of student interns

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Everybody wants to make a difference in this world, but how do you do that?  Graduating seniors are implored to reach their potential and make a real positive difference.  Thanks to the ICA-USA Service Learning intensive three-week programs dozens of college students and recent graduates have done just that.  Over 60?? students from 12??? colleges and universities added their immense energy to the already energized Chicago neighborhoods reformation project Accelerate 77, already a renowned and successful community re-building and improvement project lauded by the City of Chicago, but still in its early stages in its overall vision for building sustainable communities and improved living conditions all over Chicago’s large terrain..

The students quickly researched active and progressive civic and volunteer groups organizing improvement efforts in 20?? of the 77 Chicago neighborhood areas, identified by the ICA-USA Accelerate 77 project founded in 1999 ???.  Then the students used their creativity to generate real-world practical proposals to catalyze possible breakthrough solutions achievable by linking and coordinating the already burgeoning improvement efforts in those neighborhoods.  The impact has already been felt as groups gathered together to add the benefit of combined and cooperative efforts that have the potential to multiply their successes and improve the result.

The pioneering group leadership and action planning methods that form the foundation for both the Service Learning and Accelerate 77 programs of the non-profit ICA-USA were gathered and invented decades ago in the 1960s and 1970s.  Terry Bergdahl, CEO of ICA-USA tells the story of their earliest pilot program involving college students back in 1965.  See the video clip here.