Where am I?
Brainstorming Project Ideas
Ways to Brainstorm Project Ideas
Conduct a Survey - Students identify a need in their community through conducting a survey of parents, neighbors, other children, etc.
Read Local Newspapers - Newspapers are full of reports about community needs. The best sources are local papers that focus on neighborhood concerns.
Invite Community Agency Visitors - You can gather valuable information quickly by inviting expert speakers who deal with particular problems on a daily basis. Students can do the inviting and question asking.
Conduct a Student Community Search - Students can be organized to explore their neighborhood and search for unmet needs near their school. Provides a great opportunity for learning the skills of observation, map-reading and documentation.
Collaborate with Existing Programs - Look for partners with whom you can work. Others may have the organization, resources and contacts to help you class with a project.
Discuss Important Values - Find out what is important to the students. What values do they really care about? How might these be expressed through a service-learning project?
Create Personal World Visions - Students can write down their dreams for a better world, and then develop service-learning projects to help make them a reality.
Build on Student Expertise - Identify what individual youth in your class have to offer and brainstorm ways to utilize these skills and interests in helping others.
Focus on Key Public Issues - What are the important issues on the public agenda? Key issues are those which have come to the forefront of the national agenda because of their seriousness and timeliness.