Now in its 8th cohort, the Community-Engaged Pathways and Partnerships (P2) Collective Scholarship Fellows Program has offered teams the unique opportunity to build strong university-community partnerships and create lasting impact for nearly a decade. The program supports and advances community-engaged scholarship among UNCG scholars and community partners and provides funding and professional development opportunities to teams who are working in a context of reciprocity and mutual benefit to advance knowledge about, and accelerate activities to address, community-identified priorities. This program is unique in that projects span three years; the focus is on community-engaged methods, practices, and outcomes; and the funds support team-based, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship. Teams participate in Ripple Effect Mapping with the Institute’s staff at the end of their third year. In this piece, we highlight two partnerships and share some examples of how their impact continues to ripple throughout their work and communities.
A Community Comes Together: Supporting Children’s Readiness for School
Compromised of community cultural brokers, UNCG faculty and staff, Cone Health staff, and New Arrivals Institute team members, this team credits their time in the P2 program for the strength of their partnership and their capacity to continue this work. The team developed a model for empowering local refugee communities to increase literacy and stability as neighbors in Greensboro, NC. The partnership collectively produced a multi-lingual book that communicates basic information for navigating the local community and educational system. Over 350 of these books have been given to over 60 newly settled families.
Dr. Rachel Boit, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, shares how the P2 program impacted her journey as a community-engaged scholar, “Community-engaged work became really aligned through this P2 grant because that was where I was able to actually do a true community engaged research where the community informed the kind of work that I was going to do.” Learn more about the team’s work here.
Community Placemaking Action Lab
An interdisciplinary collective, this P2 team included members from Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, Peace and Conflict Studies, and English departments, as well as the Bending Tree Creative Collective. Initially joining together around issues of migration in the context of environmental and climate justice, this team found its primary cite of collective work with the citizens of Princeville, North Carolina, the oldest town in the U.S. incorporated by freed slaves in 1885.
Throughout the partnership the team aligned work in legislative theatre, the humanities, and peace and conflict studies with community priorities that included youth empowerment and capacity building, food insecurity, water quality and access, disaster resilience, and history preservation. Together with the community, the team documented thirty Princeville citizen stories, facilitated a community youth Playback workshop, and held two community Playback Performances. CPAL’s work continues as the team works towards producing Portraits of Princeville to be curated through a published book and through museum exhibit. Learn more about the team’s work here.