December 14, 2004 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – Susquehanna University has been awarded a $50,000 Youth Leadership Initiative grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a Fortune 500 financial services organization with nearly 2.9 million members and more than $62 billion in assets under management. Thrivent Financial, a not-for-profit organization, and its members provide approximately $200 million annually for outreach programs and activities that support congregations, schools, charitable organizations and needy individuals. The Youth Leadership Initiative grant will help fund a diverse and coordinated series of service-learning events aimed at enhancing the leadership skills and cultural awareness of Susquehanna students. Titled “Developing Servant Leaders through Service-Learning,” the project is composed of eight new service-learning events in local, regional and international settings with the cooperation of numerous organizations. Capstones of the project will include two-week service-learning/mission trips to Belize and the Philippines. “These eight new programs will enable student participants to develop leadership skills while serving and working with members of communities from the university’s neighborhood to Asia and Latin America,” said the Rev. Mark Wm. Radecke, university chaplain and director of the project. “Central to all the events is the integration of three components: traditional academic learning, service projects with, never merely for, people in need, and critical reflection on the experience and the students’ own faith and values,” Radecke said. Students traveling to Belize in June 2005 and June 2006 will be divided into two teams. One team will learn about tropical medicines and staff medical clinics in remote and poorly-served areas of the country. The other will participate in construction and education projects through the Armenia Development Center. While there, students will study Mayan culture and Mayan Christianity. Students headed to the Philippines in May 2005 will enroll in a two-credit course on the religious, political and economic situation on the islands before traveling to the country where they will work on rebuilding projects at a sugarcane plantation. Closer to home, select groups of 25 incoming freshmen will participate in immersion experiences lasting seven to 10 days in August 2005 and August 2006. These students will come to campus before the start of the academic year to engage in service activities in the Susquehanna Valley and the Washington (D.C.) area. Service activities will be combined with readings, presentations and discussions about such topics as leadership development, diversity, engaged citizenship and the nature of a just society. Six upperclass students will share in the planning and leadership of the immersion experiences each year. On campus, two new service-learning sections will be added to the required Core Perspectives course for each of the fall semesters of 2005 and 2006. Student participants will engage in a variety of community service activities under the direction of faculty and two upperclass assistants. The multi-tiered project will also include a workshop for faculty and staff on how to design and teach new service-learning courses. Another component will bring faculty and staff together with leaders of student service and religious life organizations to learn how to integrate volunteer projects with traditional classroom education, personal and spiritual development, and leadership development. The Youth Leadership Initiative also includes the addition of adult workshops at Susquehanna’s annual Lutheran Youth Day, which will explore how service-learning relates to spiritual and leadership development. Similar workshops will be presented at the annual assembly of the ELCA’s Upper Susquehanna Synod. The activities will require students to partner with a variety of organizations including the Upper Susquehanna, Lower Susquehanna, Metro D.C. and Allegheny Synods of the Evangelical Church of America (ELCA), the United Way of the Central Susquehanna Valley, migrant ministries in Pennsylvania, the National Coalition for the Homeless, Medical University of the Americas in Belize, and the International Justice Mission in the Philippines. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/1689#