Community service program is growing in Bronx schools

A community service organization focused in high schools just received a $2.1 million investment from the city.

BuildOn partners with Bronx public schools to engage students in community service in their own neighborhoods.

Travis Welcome, buildOn’s chief U.S. program officer, said he highly anticipates the coming year, as buildOn will expand to reach another six schools.

The organization currently operates in 17 schools, up from nine the previous academic year.

BuildOn is currently in the process of confirming its new partnerships. The organization plans to have a partnership with at least one school in every neighborhood in the Bronx within the next five years. For next year, Wendy Herman, buildOn’s director of marketing, hinted it could be partnered with a school in Kingsbridge Heights.

BuildOn’s work begins in the classroom, where it works during flex periods or as an elective. Students sign up to be part of the program and meet under the guidance of an engagement specialist.

The organization can also join existing classrooms to work in partnership with a teacher.

For example, Welcome said, a social-studies teacher may choose to teach about food injustice. This topic provides the perfect opportunity for a buildOn engagement specialist to come to the classroom and help students investigate food injustice in their area and identify an opportunity for their classroom to bring the material to life.

“BuildOn helps kids understand that they ought to be citizens of the world while still paying attention to their neighborhood,” schools chancellor David Banks said.

In classrooms, students are introduced to buildOn’s framework, dubbed IPARD — investigation, preparation, action, reflection and demonstration. Students engage in the first step of investigation to identify where they would like to be of assistance to their community. After completing the chosen community service, the students are required to reflect on their actions. Finally, the students must present results of their work to the school.

“Students have an opportunity to reflect on how they feel the service impacted the community, how they would like to continue impacting the community, and how they can continue to share their experience,” Welcome said.

Welcome said the data speaks for itself. According to buildOn, students enrolled in the program come to school 15 more days per year and their graduation rate is 97 percent.

The current Bronx County average graduation rate is 80 percent.

“The students are the center of the work that we’re doing,” Welcome said. “The students are the ones who choose what they want to tackle in the community, so that’s why, at different schools, there are different services.”

For example, at Bronx School for Law, Government & Justice, the majority of students wanted to work on tutoring, so buildOn partnered with the elementary school across the street to create after-school services two to three times a week.

Another school could have a heavy interest in environmental work, Welcome said, so its service would include working with the parks department.

The city’s investment in the nonprofit has also helped expand buildOn’s work. The program comes at no cost to the school or students, and buildOn helps supplement its costs with grants and other funding.

Welcome said feedback from the program is overwhelmingly positive. Students have expressed finding a home in their schools thanks to their work with buildOn.

“It helps them to stay focused in school,” Welcome said. “Some of our students who weren’t the best with grades found service was the one thing they were good at, so it helped to keep them focused and be resilient in the face of challenges.”

Another indicator to the organization its work has been successful is students come back.

Students who graduate often return and continue to engage with the program as alumnae, helping to guide a new generation of students through the program.

Outside of the classroom, students can also take global service trips, which take students abroad every summer to apply their work elsewhere.

Welcome said these trips are one of the most exciting aspects of the program. Students take their buildOn work from their neighborhood to places like Senegal, Nicaragua, and Nepal, leaving a lasting impression.