Class projects provide local nonprofits with valuable benefits

When Zach Alig was contacted by students in School of Social Work faculty member Kristina Jaskyte’s class, the timing couldn’t have been better.

“I had recently been asked to create a survey and report on our volunteers' build site experiences,” said Alig, public outreach coordinator for the Athens Area Habitat for Humanity. “At about the same time, I was contacted by a group from Prof. Jaskyte's class asking if they could do just that. It was fantastic. With little more on my part than a brief meeting and several phone calls, I was presented with a detailed and professional report. The group's hard work saved Athens Area Habitat time and money and proved useful in improving our volunteer experience.”

The Athens Area Habitat for Humanity is just one local nonprofit organization that has benefited from the work of students in Jaskyte’s SOWK/MNPO 7106 class, Evaluating Community Initiatives and Institutional Practices. For three years, the students have worked with local nonprofit and government organizations helping them design and implement program evaluations. Thus far the students completed 16 program evaluation projects for 14 different organizations.

While recognizing the complexity of designing and implementing a program evaluation project in under four months, Jaskyte sees this type of a service learning project as a great learning opportunity for her students and a benefit to the community. Upon completion of this project every organization receives a program evaluation report that discusses the evaluation questions, methodology, and most importantly, results and implications for organization’s future programming. The organizations can use the results when writing grant proposals to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programs, in their promotional materials, and they can also use them to improve their programming.

“The students not only obtain the knowledge about program evaluation process but also develop the skills for designing and implementing a program evaluation and for using Statistical Software for Social Sciences (SPSS),” Jaskyte said. “They also learn how important flexibility, team work, time management and planning are for success of such a complex project. At the end of the semester they have a tangible product—a program evaluation report—that they can include in their professional portfolios.”

For MSW student Regina Smalls who took the course fall semester 2008, Jaskyte’s class was a challenging but rewarding one.

“It is one thing to design a program evaluation on paper, but to actually implement the evaluation takes learning to a whole different level,” Smalls said. “Through the course of the fall semester, our class learned the nuts and bolts of program evaluation and we were able to create and implement an actual evaluation ourselves. It was a valuable experience getting to meet with actual organizations and design program evaluations tailored to their needs.”

Smalls’ group completed an evaluation for the Clarke County School District Migrant Education Program (MEP) for which they assessed the comprehension and visibility of the program among parents of migrant students as well as teachers. Despite some logistical issues and bumps along the way, the students were able to provide MEP with useful data that could help to improve the program and better serve migrant children.

“Completing research, designing a project from scratch, developing a measurement instrument, gathering and analyzing data, and presenting and discussing results has provided me with knowledge and skills that will prove useful in the future, especially since I want to embark on a research oriented career,” Smalls said. “But in addition to the knowledge and skills I learned from completing a program evaluation, knowing that our evaluation project may make a difference in the lives of others, especially children, is one of the biggest benefits of all, because helping others is what true social work is all about.”

The experience was one that proved beneficial for the Migrant Education Program, as well, according to program coordinator Sabrina E. Godinez. Each year, the program is required to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment every year in order to engage their stakeholders in the design and planning of the services that they offer and to gauge the effectiveness of those services.

“As you can imagine, this can be a very daunting task,” Godinez said. “However, Dr. Jaskyte's students proved to be of great assistance in every step of the process; from helping to create the survey to collecting the information and reporting the results in a very organized and clear manner. The information these students helped collect has not only given us insight into how our stakeholders perceive current program offerings, but also provided guidance for the design of future services. I was very pleased with our collaboration.”

Student Natasha Murphy’s group worked with Keep Athens-Clarke County Beautiful. After conducted a needs assessment survey to gauge area resident’s knowledge of the organization’s outreach activities and campaigns as well as their knowledge and opinions of penalties associated with littering, Murphy developed a personal interest in the organization and will be interning with KACCB this semester.

“My main projects are designing a contact database that will enable the organization to create groups and target their outreach correspondence,” Murphy said. “I will also be doing some graphic design for their newest litter prevention ad campaign.”

Other organizations served by Jaskyte’s students include: Georgia Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, Good Will, Bike Athens, Emmaus House, Northeast Georgia Head Start, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, UGA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Resource Center, Hands On Northeast Georgia, Carl Vinson Institute of Government,  and the Clarke County Department of Family and Children Services.