The Everett Program is an innovative service-learning program that offers a well-established and proven model for student- initiated, faculty-supervised undergraduate learning and practice. By deploying the tools of information-communication technology (ICT) and social entrepreneurship, The Everett Program empowers students to collaborate with civil society groups in order to attack poverty promote sustainable development, and strengthen their governance capacities. Organized as a participatory, digital social enterprise and managed by student Fellows, Executive Fellows and staff, GIIP was created in 1998 under the directorship of Professor Paul Lubeck (emeritus, on recall for three years) and is currently directed by Dr. Chris Benner.
The Everett Program approach to education and practice is a unique yet scalable model based on innovative methodology, curriculum and practicum, guided by the maxim “learning by doing” in working groups, emphasizing “hands on,” achievable projects. Students are taught to use ICT applications to envision, design, implement and fund projects that attack poverty and social exclusion in a measurable way, while fellows and staff teach technical sections, provide peer advising, coordinate working groups, and raise project support funds. The Everett Program sends trained and certified interns to collaborating groups, assessing partners’ needs through ethnographic field methods and assisting in the development of their ICT, management and governance capacities.
The Everett Program is an established curriculum anchored by a three-course series, during which interns come up with an idea, write a business plan, learn to design and implement a project, and apply for grant funding. They take technological workshops tailored to their project needs and skill levels. Interns who do well during their first year are invited to become Fellows, tasked with managing The Everett Program, teaching technology workshops, handling program publicity, and doing anything else needed.
Keywords: service-learning; information-communication technology (ICT); social entrepreneurship; civil society groups; poverty; sustainable development
Contact: everettprogram@ucsc.edu
Faculty Director: Chris Benner
https://www.everettprogram.ucsc.edu
See https://everettprogram.ucsc.edu
Building Bridges over the Digital Divide, UCSC Review, Fall 2012