Learning, Listening, and Living in the Community: MCLP supports five new community service projects

HSH project team
Home Sweet Home Ministries (HSHM) CEO Mary Ann Pullin gives the MCLP project team a tour of the HSHM food coop, located at 303 E. Oakland Avenue in Bloomington. Left to right; Nikita Burns, Hetal Dhirawani, Richard Lozada, Sunish Menon, and HSHM CEO Mary Ann Pullin.

With a focus on servant leadership, the Multicultural Leadership Program (MCLP) experience is hugely impacted by community service projects. By working on these projects in teams, participants learn to use their skills to benefit the community.

The MCLP Class of 2016 will complete five new projects with focuses ranging from education, to social services, to the arts. The organizations that teams will be working with are Milestones Early Learning Center & Preschool, Home Sweet Home Ministries, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, LIFE Center for Independent Living, and Crossroads Handcrafts of the World. The projects aim to improve the effectiveness of these organizations within the community.

  • Milestones Early Learning Center & Preschool is looking to explore new revenue generating options by methods such as selling milk to families to save them a trip to the grocery store.
  • Developing a plan to ensure equal service to individuals regardless of race, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender is the project goal for Home Sweet Home Ministries.
  • The Illinois Symphony Orchestra project aims to develop a marketing plan to help cultivate and diversify their audience base.
  • The goal of the LIFE Center for Independent Living project is to create a plan to improve their annual fundraising efforts. Crossroads Handcrafts of the World would like help with creating an operational manual for day-to-day operations and developing a marketing plan to establish a loyal customer base.

The MCLP Community Involvement Team selected this year’s community projects from 21 proposals. In this selection process, they look for projects that will allow participants to have a meaningful and sustainable impact on the organizations lasting beyond the 8-month length of the program.