When people create community across cultures and socioeconomic status, we can change the world!

Why Service Learning?

Service Learning Immersion is a tool for social change and is a model of deep, enriched community service. It is more than just volunteer work, but rather a reciprocal model of service where those serve and those who are being served mutually learn from one another.

Service Learning allows a group to actively provide service to a community while learning about the community’s history, social issues, and culture.

Apopka offers a rich learning environment for this experience. Central Florida is brimming with history and diversity, from its rural farmworker roots to its increasingly urbanized, multicultural character.

Why Hope CommUnity Center?

We are pioneers in the field of Community and Civic Engagement and we have a long history of facilitating experiences like this! HCC has developed a unique model which makes it possible for people from all walks of life to participate in our community and offers year-round availability for Service Learning experiences that last from a single day up to an entire semester.

 

The team at HCC will work with your school or organization to create a tailored experience.

 

How Does Service Learning at HCC Work?

The most important component of HCC’s Service Learning Program is that it is immersive. Participants do not passively participate in service and then walk away, but rather spend their time here broadening their perspective through direct experience. Additionally, host families and members of the community learn and grow through their interactions with people of different races, faiths, and lived experiences than them. The goal is that both the participant and the host community broaden their world view through building relationships with people of different lived experience.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLg290M_tGA?list=PLtwqzowlh_VrYbmMpyeRA_DXBT0OESzo5&w=560&h=315]

 

Here is how the experience is immersive! Participants spend their time living with a host family in the community, getting to know about their experiences and their reality by stepping into it for their time here. Additionally, participants engage in framework or another model of service to better understand the economic and working conditions of many members of our community. All of these experiences are supplemented with dialogue around a series of themes. These themes include but are not limited to:

[one_third]The Immigration System[/one_third][one_third]Youth & Education[/one_third][one_third]Root Causes of Migration[/one_third][one_third]Catholic Social Teaching[/one_third][one_third]Story of Self[/one_third][one_third]Building Power[/one_third][one_third]Intersectionality[/one_third][one_third]Culture of Poverty[/one_third][one_third]Power, Privilege, & Identity[/one_third][one_third]Agro-Ecology & Food Sovereignty[/one_third][one_third]Community Organizing & Leadership[/one_third][one_third]Anti-Blackness, Racism, & White Supremacy[/one_third]

 

 

 

Take a look at a sample one-day, weekend, or weeklong itinerary to get an idea of what to expect!

Partnerships

Current and past partnerships include:           

[one_half]University of Central Florida[/one_half]

[one_half]Rollins College[/one_half]

[one_half]Seminole State College[/one_half]

[one_half]Valencia College[/one_half]

[one_half]Stetson University[/one_half]

[one_half]InterVarsity Christian Fellowship[/one_half]

[one_half]Loyola University Maryland[/one_half]

[one_half]Bridgewater State University[/one_half]

[one_half]Stonehill College[/one_half]

[one_half]Gonzaga College High School[/one_half]

[one_half]Xavier University[/one_half]

[one_half]Harvard University[/one_half]

[one_half]Duke University[/one_half]

[one_half]La Salle Academy Providence[/one_half]

 

 

Not convinced? Hear from our past participants!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMiBRWkwYso&w=300&h=200]

 

 

Ready to Find Out More?

Call Chris Furino or Liliana Alvarez at (407) 880-4673 ext. 233, or email them at [email protected] or [email protected]. In the meantime, you can view our Information Packet on Alternative Breaks (it will open as a PDF) and fill out the form below so we can get in touch!