An Elmhurst College educational service program designed to foster social responsibility among students has won a $3,000 grant from the DuPage Community Foundation.
The grant, awarded to the liberal arts institution’s Service-Learning Program, will provide funding for a project that teams Elmhurst College with the Department of Children and Family Services in Glen Ellyn.
The Service-Learning Program, part of the college’s year-old Center for Professional Excellence, combines academic studies and community work to help students become “true professionals in terms of social responsibility and global understanding,” said Lynda Slimmer, Service-Learning Program coordinator and a professor of nursing at the college.
“We have limited resources to do our service projects,” she said. “Getting this money allows us to focus in on a specific partnership and meet specific needs.”
Slimmer said the 255 students enrolled in the program this semester have begun assisting DCFS in Glen Ellyn.
Students have held a Christmas party for children in foster care and their foster families. Students also have assembled overnight bags for children who must be taken from their homes and placed in foster care, Slimmer said.
Plans call for participating Elmhurst College students to entertain about 50 foster-care children at a spring party and provide gift baskets for foster parents to give to children in their care.
Students also will help provide learning materials to educate foster parents on stress reduction, child development and other issues.
“Students from three different disciplines–sociology, psychology and education–are all working together on this project,” Slimmer said. “What is important is that they are all working together in the same kinds of ways that they will work together after they graduate.”
The grant was made possible by earnings from the DuPage Community Foundation’s general endowment fund, said Bonnie L. Heydorn, program director for the foundation.