Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM: Room 163 [C32]

Trust and Community: How Nonprofits Become a Band-Aid

Presenter: Guy R. Zwiebel

Faculty Sponsor: Christina Metevier

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Communication and Media Studies

ABSTRACT

Community engagement and social services are essential tools in modern-day America in helping people who have been systemically forgotten. Nonprofit organizations designed to provide a service to underserved communities in particular are especially valuable for the trust they gain in the communities they provide for. When they offer services outside of their stated goal, it is referred to as "mission drift". But what happens when these services outside of the stated goal become necessary? What happens when these nonprofits become the only trustworthy local resource for these communities?

In our modern America, where resources are being funneled away from public and social welfare, the needs of the people that enable them to even be participants towards a nonprofit's stated goal may be very far outside of the intended use of that nonprofit.

For this initiative, I worked with Project Literacy in Watertown through the Charles River Campus's Community Engagement and Service Learning internship program LEAD (Linking Employment to Academic Development). Project Literacy's stated goal is to teach English in all its forms to nonnative English learners of all levels. Through my time there I observed that the greatest obstacle to learning had nothing to do with the quality of the education provided or willingness of the student to learn, but almost entirely due to more basic needs and whether they were being met and Project Literacy as a trusted community resource would help facilitate.

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