Temple University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Urban Apps & Maps Studios is a university-wide interdisciplinary program of urban civic start-ups and community engagement. Urban Apps and Maps Studios aim to build a vibrant ecosystem with community members, university faculty and students, and businesses to catalyze urban innovation using digital technology. Directly working with community members in North Philadelphia, the Studios designs, develops and incubates civic start-ups to transform urban challenges into sustainable products and services. We believe in the idea of "citizen entrepreneurship" as a powerful way of leveraging the city as a platform. It offers mentoring and internship opportunities to local high school students and internship. The BITS-Apps and Maps summer program maps onto six weeks plus one week of staff training immediately preceding the youths’ arrival. Staff training involves building trainings for working with youth and acting as a mentor, handling conflicts, understanding the specifics of the respective program placement, depending on what program the particular individual would be working with, and fostering group camaraderie an support. The youth arrive on the first Monday in July and work twenty hours a week, Monday through Thursday. Week 1: introductory modules that detail the objectives of each program, then getting to work. Week 2 – 5: field work, Labwork, and. Week 6: Practice presentations of the final projects and Final Showcase Final Showcase offers an opportunity for the youth to present their work to the greater community as well as family and friends. The program also hosts a series of presentations to the Apps and Maps board members, where the Internship groups present their work in a formal manner. With the BITS program ongoing for the last fifteen years, we have many returning youth each summer; we see a similar pattern continuing with the Apps and Maps program as well, indicating the relevance and success of this learning model. Internship Model The internship program consists of several projects hosted by the Urban Apps and Maps Studio that will investigate the possibilities of social media to affect change in the urban environment of North Philadelphia. Results of these various projects will be outlines for social media and smartphone applications that would address issues of urban health, urban farming, and related themes grounded in improving the urban spaces and subsequently raise quality of life within North Philadelphia. Through the Urban Apps and Maps Studio we educate, train, and support local youth utilizing digital tools including apps, maps and online content. With this training, the participants in the Urban Apps and Maps Studio are on their way to becoming the next generation of leaders due to their hard earned capability to define urban social problems and create the tools to help alleviate them. Service Learning Model The larger aim of this educational experience is to create and foster a new generation of neighborhood community leaders in Philadelphia from the youth in the program. These students will be able to use this training on to further involve their family and community members all in an attempt to establish a foundation of basic information technology (IT) literacy skills that will act as pathway for fostering community engagement. Service learning through BITS is designed in such a way to develop “digital communities” through student engagement that focuses on solving urban problems, specifically, around economic opportunity, personal and environmental health, safety, and the arts. The program uses geographic fieldwork techniques of critical observation, investigation, and thick description paired with IT skill-building to identify, research, and propose solutions to these urban problems. In addition to this, general reading and writing comprehension is enhanced through the process, and on-location exploration of places in Philadelphia are utilized as a means of identifying innovative solutions. The seemingly intractable problems concerning urban problem solving are contextualized from an issue affecting the entire city as well as affecting each individual citizen. http://appsnmaps.temple.edu/

The Center for Sustainable Communities at Temple University conducts integrated social and environmental research on natural, technological, and socio-economic systems to address the challenges of sustainability—how can we meet the needs of people locally and globally through equitable, innovative and practical solutions that protect the environment which sustains life on the planet. The Center for Sustainable Communities (CSC) at Temple University Ambler was established in July 2000 to develop and promote new approaches to protect and preserve quality of life through sustainable development. The Center, housed in the College of Liberal Arts, draws on resources at both TU Ambler and Main Campuses to conduct interdisciplinary research and offer educational and community outreach programs. A working resource for government agencies, community organizations, and industry, the CSC provides objective information and services to improve decision-making relative to sustainable development. The Center draws on expertise from across the social and environmental sciences and diverse methodological approaches that include geospatial analysis and techniques, community-based research and citizen science. https://www.cla.temple.edu/center-for-sustainable-communities/

Symphony for a Broken Orchestra is a two year initiative committed to re-imagining sustainable art education throughout the Philadelphia School District. As part of our work, David Lang will be creating a visionary new composition featuring approximately 400 of the School District of Philadelphia’s 1,000 broken instruments. This new work will premiere in December 3, 2017, and will be performed by a specially assembled orchestra of 400 musicians from across Philadelphia that will be conducted by Jayce Ogren. Following the performances, Temple Contemporary, in collaboration with instrument repair professionals, will repair all of the fixable instruments and return them back to the School District in the fall of 2018. Instrument repair kits will also be installed in every public school offering instrumental music classes, allowing any broken instruments in the future to be repaired. We will be working with instrument repair professionals after the concert that will fix all of the instruments that can be fixed. Once they are repaired, they will be returned to the school from which they originated. In addition, we will also be installing musical repair kits in each of the schools that offer music instrument classes, giving teachers the tools needed to make any simple repairs in the future. Currently the School District of Philadelphia has a limited budget. Through this project we hope to highlight music education in our public schools, and provide support to fix the instruments in need of repair, returning them back to the classrooms and making it possible for more children to play. The music repair kits that will be installed in each of these schools will also provide an on-going resource so that when instruments need simple repairs, these will be able to be done. http://symphonyforabrokenorchestra.org/faq/

http://appsnmaps.temple.edu/activities/summer-program-model/ https://www.cla.temple.edu/center-for-sustainable-communities/ http://symphonyforabrokenorchestra.org/faq/