Educated and Empowered: The Process of a Cross-Cultural Community Collaboration

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the process by which a team of interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate students, together with their faculty, engaged in a semester-long project in which they partnered with and planned a community-facing event with, by, and for the local Haitian immigrant community. The event, Educated and Empowered, consisted of a three-hour long community fair which provided members of the local Haitian community with resources on area social service agencies, opportunities for civic engagement, and an outlet for building social capital via both intra-cultural bonding and cross-cultural bridging. A discussion of the key take-aways (lessons learned) and reflections on student learning are provided.