Over the past two years, students in Belmont University's Global Honors Scholars' Collaborative junior year project have partnered with The Branch of Nashville to create resources to help the nonprofit fulfill its mission of providing food security, English language acquisition and comprehensive care to underserved communities in Nashville. The partnership was made possible through Belmont’s BASIC grant.
Belmont students and instructors, as well as representatives and clients from The Branch, gathered at Belmont Monday, April 22, to present their work from the past year and show mini-documentaries the students made in conjunction with the project, led by Drs. Mary Ellen Pethel, John Gonas and Jen Duck.
"The collaboration between our honors students and The Branch was amazing," said Pethel, associate director of Global Honors within Belmont’s Interdisciplinary Studies and Global Education (ISGE) division. “We started in the fall, and we asked all of our students to serve and volunteer at The Branch. . . . literally rolling up their sleeves. [Dr. John Gonas] always says that everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to help mom wash the dishes. We're doing both.”
Creating Demographic Reports and Future Metrics
One group of honors students focused on collecting and analyzing demographic data for the primary zip codes served by The Branch. They created visualizations of key metrics like employment, income, poverty, language, race and ethnicity to help The Branch better understand the communities it serves. The students also identified future metrics for The Branch to collect to measure its economic impact.
"The categories of data that we ended up focusing on were employment, income, poverty and language, as well as general population statistics such as race and ethnicity," said Nicole Speyrer, one of the students in the group. “Those are the metrics that we felt The Branch could best use.”
Developing Client Resource Guides
Another group of students worked closely with The Branch's comprehensive care director, Ashley Smith, to create accessible resource guides for clients on topics like accessing health care, finding affordable medications and changing phone language settings. The goal was to empower clients with tools to overcome common barriers.
"We're trying to figure out how to maximize sustainability with our deliverables,” Jules Webb said, a student who worked on the project. “We are going to graduate eventually and won't be able to continue doing all of this labor, but other students can. Clients can help The Branch by providing opportunities for translation and helping folks who have not used services before. Maybe they have used the services and have been able to use our guide for it, which can help make that process easier. This will hopefully foster community.”
Enhancing Volunteer Training with Video
A third group focused on improving the sustainability of The Branch's volunteer resources by creating training videos for key volunteer roles. The videos provide an engaging, accessible way for new volunteers to learn their responsibilities before their first shift.
Student Mini-Documentaries
Curb College students also produced mini-documentaries featuring the stories of four refugee families served by The Branch, which aired Monday night. Dr. Jen Duck, who led the journalism course where students reported these stories, reflected on the student-produced documentaries and thanked those from The Branch in attendance. "These are the stories of immigrants, refugees and people who The Branch serve. The story behind the data today is really important. We're so thankful you welcomed us. You trusted us. We learned so much.”
Learn more about the Global Honors program at Belmont.