Public Good Fund Awards

Fall 2006

 

OUTREACH PROJECT GRANTS (up to $10,000)

Inna Altschul, Assistant Professor, GSSW
Youth Empowerment and Leadership Development - The central goal of this project is to develop leadership capacity among adolescents living in three Denver public housing communities, with the long term goal of facilitating active youth involvement in program planning and leadership. This project fills a timely need for the development of youth leadership in these communities as the Bridge Project embarks on establishing a new youth center there. By participating in the proposed program young leaders will gain community organizing and program development skills, and be empowered to affect programs and policies that influence them directly. Program participants will work to identify issues of concern for their peers, conduct research on one issue, generate short term and long term plans for addressing the underlying causes of the problem, design a program to help other youth understand and confront the problem, and present findings about issues of concern, their plan of action and developed program to major stakeholders in the community and University. In addition, as part of this project, DU students will gain invaluable community engagement skills; and the University of Denver will be able to play a key role in developing youth leadership in communities with which we have had long standing relationships.

Jennifer Fitchett, Assistant Professor, GSSW, and Philip Tedeschi , Animal Assisted Social Work, GSSW
Animal-Assisted Intervention Technical Assistance Fund - Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) address physical, social, cognitive, emotional, motivational, educational, recreational, or therapeutic goals for people in need. As the field of AAI has grown, many providers in metropolitan Denver have become interested in these methods to offer effective, high-quality, motivating services for their clients. However, opportunities for practitioners to learn about designing and delivering AAI are rare because the field is emerging. Every month, the Institute for Human-Animal Conneciton receives requests from community organizations to provide technical assistance (TA) to design, implement, refine, or evaluate their animal-assisted programs. Unfortunately, neither do these organizations have the funds available to purchase TA, nor does the Instiitute have the capacity to offer the services at no charge. This application proposes the creation of an Animal-Assistance Intervention Technical Assistance Fund. This TA Fund would offer a stipend to agencies seeking TA from the Institute, to be matched by a portion of agency funds. Agencies must take ownership for animal-assisted programs, rather than considering them to be “special” projects funded solely by outside sources. This collaborative partnership will allow agencies to receive the help they need, the Institute to share its expertise, and clients to ultimately reap the benefits of excellently-structured AAI.  

David Goldfischer, Associate Professor, GSIS; Ann Petrila, Clinical Assistant Professor, GSSW; Greg Moser, Director of Homeland Security Initiatives, GSIS
Special Need Preparedness Assistance Project - This project will fund intern support to work with the preparedness agencies of Jefferson County, Arvada, Golden, Lakewood and Wheat Ridge and private sector stakeholders in a community based effort to improve the disaster preparedness of special needs populations. Although this has been identified as a national priority in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, no funding has been made available locally to address this need. Under this project, interns from the Graduate School of International Studies Homeland Security Program and the Graduate School of Social Work will provide approximately 720 funded staff hours to help these communities address the needs of their most vulnerable populations. Volunteers and unfunded internships will also be coordinated to maximize the impact of this effort. The initial focus will be planning and training to help over 130 long-term care facilities become better prepared. Participants in this project will also work with our faculty and various advocacy groups to develop preparedness guidelines for the general special needs population and their care givers. This project is an excellent opportunity to provide practical, meaningful community service for our students and address the un-met need of these community partners.

Leanne Jeffers, Public Health Training Coordinator, University College
Planning Active Community Environments Training (PlACE Training) - The relationship between our built environment (land use and community planning/design) and the health and well-being (e.g. cardiovascular health, obesity, diabetes, injury, air quality) of people who live in those environments is emerging as an important field within the disciplines of public health and planning. Since this is a new topic within public health, there are few public health professionals who are sufficiently trained in this subject area. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Colorado Physical Activity and Nutrition Program (COPAN) has requested the partnership of Leanne Jeffers of the Regional Institute for Health and Environmental Leadership (RIHEL) at the University of Denver, University College and the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute (RMLUI) of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law to develop and implement an in-depth skill-building pilot training for public health professionals on land use planning and community design. This workshop will initially target public health professionals from organizations and communities already engaged in Healthy Eating and Active Living initiatives. Ultimately, this three-way partnership will produce a model replicable curriculum, build capacity of the public health workforce in the state, and produce concrete, sustainable policy or environmental change in local communities and neighborhoods to positively impact the built environment and the health of the people living in those places.

G. Kristian Miccio, Associate Professor, Sturm College of Law
Project Equal Justice - This project collaborates with community partners to identify the legal needs of battered women in Colorado, through facilitation of roundtables/focus groups with battered women and advocates throughout the entire state. It seeks to identify needs and make recommendations as the first step in the creation of a state-wide legal services center devoted to the legal representation of battered women, to provide technical assistance to local shelters, and to create public policy and engage in impact litigation that addresses the needs of battered women and their children.

Greg Pickett, Project Manager, Office of Special Community Programs/Volunteers in Partnership (VIP) Program
VIP Program Evaluation - This project will produce a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of all aspects of the VIP program. The VIP program is an outreach between DU, four urban high schools and two urban middle schools in the Denver Metro Area with highly diverse and economically disadvantaged populations. The primary focus of the VIP program is to support and encourage at-risk students to finish high school and go on to college. These goals are met through programming and workshops at the partner schools. This program has been enormously successful in creating opportunities for at-risk students to finish high school and go on to college; however the program has recently expanded. As it grows, the program needs to be thoroughly evaluated to ensure that the services we provide to our partnering schools are effective. Additionally the program needs quality data for grant applications to fund the recent expansion as well as future opportunities for expansion. In order to gauge our programs during expansion and to secure additional grant funding, the VIP program must engage in academic level qualitative and quantitative analysis of the programs.

N. Eugene Walls, Assistant Professor, GSSW, and Cathryn Potter, Associate Professor, GSSW
Evaluating the Mental Health Needs of Homeless Youth - This project examines the prevalence and scope of mental health issues among homeless youth and young adults in the Denver metropolitan area. Identified as a community-based research priority by staff at Urban Peak and members of the organization’s research committee, the study extends existing literature and information available to the organization by addressing weaknesses in previous studies of mental health issues among the agency’s population. The project utilizes a team of trained student data collectors to survey the agency’s population utilizing a nationally recognized mental health assessment instrument.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT GRANTS (up to $1,500)

Matthew Taylor, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography
Investigating Energy Independence Options Among Return Refugee Cooperatives on Guatemala ’s South Coast - This project will work with return refugee communities (cooperatives) on Guatemala’s south coast to explore their interests in energy independence. These cooperatives can cultivate Jatropha (Jatropha curcas L), from which oil for household consumption or for sale can be extracted. Community-based research with the help of DU students will assess the energy needs of these communities. This project development proposal seeks funds to concretize contacts with return refugee communities and local biodiesel producers (who have interests in purchasing raw vegetable oil produced by the return refugee communities). Moreover, this project seeks to set up contacts with the above-mentioned communities to enable DU students to interact with the communities to help design and conduct community-based research

Chris Teuton, Assistant Professor, Department of English
The Denver American Indian Community Reading Group Project - This project unites indigenous people of Denver through reading and commenting on works of contemporary Native American literature. In consultation with Ms. Nancy Lucero (Choctaw Nation), a long time Denver area social worker, Dr. Chris Teuton (Cherokee Nation) identified a need in the Denver Indian community: a forum in which Native readers could gather and share their thoughts on indigenous identity, community, politics, and culture as these are explored in American Indian literature and experienced in Denver. With support from the Public Good Scholarship Fund, Dr. Teuton will provide participants with books and refreshments for our meetings. As the Project is just beginning, the goal of this first year is to establish camaraderie and commitment among our participants. Once a strong membership base is established, Dr. Teuton and Ms. Lucero will create a Project e-newsletter in which participants publish their commentaries on Native literature and life in Denver. In consultation with the Project participants, Dr. Teuton will work to further the Project’s potential impact on the Denver American Indian community. Possible outcomes of the Project include establishing additional reading groups in the Denver area, creating a creative writing group, and transforming the Project into a credit-granting University of Denver course that could lead to admittance into the University of Denver.