Mesa Legend - News - Students learn skills by serving community

Students learn skills by serving community
Ivy Villaflores
Mesa Legend
Students of Vincent DiFranco’s public relations class are spearheading service-learning projects with their time and talent.

Aimed to help sharpen their public relations goals, DiFranco assigns service-learning projects to his public relations students the value of real problems and experiences through their projects.

The projects, coordinated with Dawn Rhodes of Service-Learning, give students the opportunities to not only apply their academic knowledge, but also to help enrich the students perspectives of the community.

“There is a need for services in this community, and service-learning is a great starting point for people to get involved and get a feel of what they work well with,” Rhodes said.

Students are teamed up with non-profit organizations in Mesa. Duties of the service-learning projects include creating mission statements, organizing events, gathering volunteers and spreading the word to the community of the respective organizations.

Contacting media, creating pamphlets and organizing information is just a small aspect of what the students do. Students visit the site centers to get a hands-on experience of their cooperative organzations.

Marie Opie, who is working with Banner Hospice, said she didn’t even know about service-learning before she took the class. “It’s great for helping you get into schools like ASU and other four-year universities, but it also feels good to help other people,” Opie said.

Opie added that not only was the academic part enduring, but so was the personal part. “Visiting the hospice was gut wrenching, especially when you know that the people there aren’t going to live,” Opie said.

Joshua Kunz, who is working with Mesa Association of Sports for the Disabled, reiterated that feeling.

“You can’t get involved with these organizations without taking away something personally,” Kunz said.

DiFranco noted that he hopes his students become more aware of what’s going on in the community, and applies “think outside the book” as his theory to his students.

“These projects are benchmarks. “It’s a process and a good experience. The students become more aware of what goes on in situations where things fall through,” DiFranco said.

Some students plan on taking their experiences and passing it on. Angela Cesario, who is working with Kunz with MASD, said she suggested to her little sister to take this course. “It’s easy to say that you’ll get involved with something, but when it’s part of a project, you get really involved with it.” Cesario said.