We Don't Waste: Service learning partnership in Spanish 2003

For the fourth year in a row, SPAN 2003 students continued to volunteer their time and energy supporting the important work of We Don't Waste (WDW), a non-profit organization dedicated to mitigating food waste and food insecurity in the Denver-metro area. This year, our students mainly helped check in community members participating in their weekly markets. While our community members speak a variety of languages, WDW has identified an urgent need for Spanish-English bilingual speakers during the check-in process to be able to better serve those participating. Our DU students embraced the challenge, setting aside their anxieties about engaging with speakers in the "real world", and offered invaluable support to the mission of WDW.

With the help of the CCESL grant, we were able to purchase refurbished ipads (and covers) to be used during the check-in process. In this way, multiple people were able to check in at a time, thus streamlining the process and allowing WDW to serve more people. To support this process, representatives from WDW visited all SPAN 2003 classes to talk about what to expect during the markets and answer questions about the check-in process. Our students and our friends at WDW only had wonderful things to say about their experience.

This is a fruitful partnership that serves a need identified by WDW while also allowing our students to apply what they have been learning in class to real-world contexts and interactions. We are grateful for the generous support of CCESL to help grow this partnership and contribute to WDW in meaningful ways.