Throughout the academic year, several Safe Harbor Center programs are working with students and faculty members of the College of Coastal Georgia. Service-learning is an academic service opportunity in which, as part of a course, students collaborate with local organizations to meet the academic course goals while also meeting a community need. Students gain vital insight to community agencies and experience collaborating with and initiating interventions to help alleviate community issues.

A group of Dr. Mary McGinnis’ English Composition students worked with the Connie Smith Rape Crisis Center to collect new, packaged men’s and women’s underwear in all sizes at the College through Thanksgiving. A group of students in Professor Lee McKinley’s Advanced Health Informatics class worked with Zach’s Place to collect much needed personal hygiene items such as dental, hair, nail, and body care products.

A senior Psychology student, Kashawn Littlejohn, has partnered with Dr. Laura Ridings with STRIVE Transitional Living Program and Jill Johnson, a Promoting Safe and Stable Families Case Manager, to re-envision an effective mentoring program in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through Dr. Jim Fullerton’s Leadership of Non-Profits & Social Enterprises course, Littlejohn contributed many more service hours than required and has gone above and beyond to collaboratively re-envision the mentoring program. The mentoring program had been halted due to the pandemic and STRIVE was looking for a way to continue to engage and increase adult-youth mentorships, as well as maintaining a human connection.

Littlejohn was able to help by researching online mentoring and finding a safe and cost-effective platform to run the program through. The partnership team decided on a hybrid, partial face-to-face and partial online, mentoring model with Google Classrooms as a platform that could provide asynchronous mentor training and safe virtual meeting space. This hybrid mentoring model will allow STRIVE to broaden outreach for mentors and mentees while serving as a trendsetter for other organizational mentorship programs.

To receive more information on how to become a mentor, contact Jill Johnson at jjohnson@safeharborcenterinc.org.