Don’t just do service, think about it, too

A whole lot of UNC students care about public service. The Buckley Public Service scholars program has thousands of participants, and there are more than 150 student groups focused on service in the local and global community.

But how often do we think about exactly what social impact our groups are working for, and whether it is achievable? And, just as importantly, do we measure how far we go in actually accomplishing it?

This past weekend, I went to a conference on campus called “Think About It,” which explored critical approaches to public service and international development.

It was only sparsely attended by students, which was a shame, because the host (Carolina Fonkoze, which supports a leading Haitian microfinance institution) put together a program with super facilitators, including some inspirational young development professionals.

Their discussions spanned a wide range of topics, from the challenges for female empowerment in low-resource communities to leveraging smartphone technology for public health and more.

But what provoked me the most was the final speaker, who took on a broader question: Should students try to do service abroad in the first place?

Kate Otto, a young public health consultant, described meeting woefully under-prepared American students in Indonesia for three weeks to teach AIDS-prevention strategies with neither training nor any relationships with partners on the ground.

But ultimately she concluded that students can be effective if they plan in advance, prepare the resources they need, and are willing to take a reality check about what impact they can truly have.

So think first, and then do ­— and learn from past experiences.

That’s probably a pretty good set of guidelines for any type of public service, at home or abroad.

So how do we at UNC measure up against that standard?

Last year, students in UNC’s chapter of the Roosevelt Institute explored one part of that, interviewing leaders of a dozen student groups to learn about how (and whether) service organizations at UNC measure their impact.

They found some examples of good practice — Nourish International, for example, builds success criteria into their committee work and has an evaluations coordinator responsible for considering both project success and the impact on membership.

They also saw less positive signs. Some groups were far away from having a good understanding of the impact that their efforts were having.

Obviously the ways we measure impact will vary based on the context: issue advocacy is a world apart from building schools, for example.

But the process of thinking critically about we’ve done in the past prepares us for success in the future — and it makes it easier to encourage donors to give and recruit volunteers.

It might even make our volunteer efforts seem more worthwhile.

After all, if service is worth doing, then it’s probably worth measuring by more than just the number of hours we put into it.

Mark Laichena is a senior political science and PWAD major from London, UK. Contact him at: laichena@live.unc.edu.