UP
TO THE
CHALLENGE
USF pledges to be Better Together The University of Saint Francis has signed a pledge with the White House and launched a year-long plan, “Better Together,” as part of the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. USF Center for Service Engagement Director Katrina Boedeker and a task force of faculty members from USF and Ivy Tech, staff, students and community partner representatives designed the plan to address community needs while creating opportunities for students to engage in interfaith community service. Boedeker and USF Associate Vice President, Marketing Trois Hart attended the challenge kickoff at the White House in August. USF student partners and organization leaders are working with Campus Ministry, the Center for Service Engagement, Just Peace, the Interfaith Society, the Center for Franciscan Spirit and Life, the School of Creative Arts and other academic departments and offices to improve domestic poverty, educational opportunity, health services and healthy living for the city’s resettled refugee populations. All efforts will focus on the Franciscan values of reverence for the unique dignity of each person and serving one another, society and the church. A broad range of events and projects are implanting the project in the minds of students and our community. In October, screenings of the HBO documentary “Burma Soldier,” starring local Burmese resident and political activist Myo Myint, and the photo exhibit and lecture “Life on the Border: The Karen People Photos by William Bryant Rozier
of Burma” by New York photographer Robert Gerhardt, brought the plight of Fort Wayne’s Burmese refugees, the second-largest of such populations in the country, to the forefront. On Sunday, Oct. 23, USF invited other area colleges and universities to join in a Better Together Day of Service. Nearly 150 USF students, faculty, staff and alumni collaborated with over 50 volunteers from Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and Ivy Tech East on service projects for and with the Fort Wayne resettled refugee communities, wrapping up the day with an international “after-party.” On Jan. 16, USF conducted its annual Dr. Martin Luther King Day of Service: A Day On, Not a Day Off, in which students, faculty and staff engaged in 18 service projects for a variety of community agencies. Additionally, projects and assignments infused with Better Together precepts are integrated with academic courses. Students are reading books, watching films and hearing presentations about immigrants and refugees, performing community service, creating community panels on religious diversity issues and studying comparative religions. Increasing USF’s campus-wide commitment to supporting the Fort Wayne resettled refugee populations and building the community’s understanding of the circumstances that resulted in their resettlement and the cultural changes they face in a post 9-11 climate is the initiative’s aim, Boedeker said. saint francis magazine | winter 2012
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