Service based competition targets new cities and expands challenge to include younger grades
SILVER SPRING, Md. – For the second year in a row, Belk, Discovery Education and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) are teaming up to encourage students to apply the skills they learn in the classroom to real-life challenges and facilitate positive changes in their communities. Targeting new cities and expanding to include fourth and fifth-graders, the second year of the Belk Service Learning Challenge will once again encourage students to improve their communities by undertaking a service-learning project of their choice.
The Belk Service Learning Challenge is currently open to all students in grades 4-8 living within 50 miles of Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala., and Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, N.C. Working in teams of two to four with the support and guidance of a teacher/mentor, students are asked to identify a community issue and create an action plan using core classroom skills to solve the problem.
Entries for the Challenge are due by January 31, 2014. The grand prize winning team in each state will receive a $1,000 scholarship per student team member and a $250 teacher award. The second place team per state will receive a $500 scholarship per student team member and a $100 teacher award. The winning teams will also receive Belk prize packs for each student team member and teacher and will be celebrated at Belk in-store events in the spring.
“Taking an active role in our communities has been a core value at Belk since our founding almost 125 years ago, and teaming up with Discovery Education and ISTE in this initiative provides us an opportunity to teach students in our markets about the importance of service and giving back,” said Jessica Graham, Belk’s vice president of communications and community relations. “The winners of the inaugural Challenge have set the bar very high, and we are looking forward to seeing transformative projects from new participants.”
Winners of the inaugural year of the Challenge included the Neuse Christian Academy in Raleigh, N.C. who created an assistance program for a group of Burmese refugees living in the Raleigh area. With the prize money awarded to them, the students from Neuse Christian Academy organized a series of English language classes, a job fair, acclimation kit, and lobbied their local congressman for relief.
“Service learning projects like the Belk Service Learning Challenge are not only a terrific way to show youth that corporate America is interested in education but this type of project also serves as an incentive outside of the normal routine of school to recognize and motivate exceptional students,” said Les Burleson, student advisor to last year’s Grand Prize winners from Raleigh, N.C. “The benefits are undeniable. Teachers can use the Challenge as a part of their classroom differentiation plan and students can stretch their boundaries in ways that would otherwise not be available.”
To supplement the efforts of these students in their service learning projects, dynamic online destination BelkServiceLearningChallenge.com anchors the Challenge and equips 4th-8th grade classrooms with free, standards-based service-learning curriculum, including lesson plans and multimedia tools.
For more information on the Belk Service Learning Challenge or to view the free classroom resources, please visit BelkServiceLearningChallenge.com.
