“When people create community across cultures and socioeconomic status, we can change the world!”
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.
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.
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.
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 farm work 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:
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The Immigration System
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Catholic Social Teaching
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Intersectionality
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Agro-Ecology & Food
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Youth & Education
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Story of Self
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Culture & Poverty
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Community Organizing & Leadership
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Root Causes of Migration
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Building Power
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Power, Priviledge, & Identity
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Racism, & White Supremacy
Ready to find out more?
In the meantime, check out our Service Learning Booklet.
Not convinced?
Hear from our past participants!
PARTNERSHIPS
Rollins College
Valencia College
Bridgewater State University
Gonzaga College High School
Catholic University
Georgetown Preparatory
Rutgers University
University of Central Florida
Seminole State College
Stetson University
Loyola University Maryland
Stonehill College
Xavier Univeristy
Underground (St.Pete)
University of Michigan