Kate Jenkins, a native of Memphis, Tenn., who recently finished her first year of academic work at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, is partnering with LIV Lanseria on her International Public Service Project.
A South African nonprofit, LIV Lanseria provides a home to orphaned and vulnerable children while facilitating programs and community projects that impact more than 2,500 lives each day. Founded in 1991 as a health care clinic called Refilwe Community Project, LIV Lanseria has since developed into a broad organization with focuses on child care, community development, and skills upliftment through education and mentorship.
Jenkins is working remotely with the organization to create evaluation plans for a few of its signature programs. Those programs include LIV Lanseria’s Baby Home, which was created in 2012 and provides a safe and loving home for babies on their way to adoption; LIV Families, the organization’s foster care system; and Ithuteng, a community afterschool program.
Her work fits perfectly with the ongoing efforts of the organization. LIV Lanseria is currently in the process of becoming a Child and Youth Care Centre (CYCC), a unique type of nonprofit specific to South Africa, and is using the opportunity to refocus its programming and develop structural program plans and evaluations.
“My job is to take the program plan, what they call a Philosophy of Care, and translate it into a program evaluation,” Jenkins said. “That includes researching different interventions that the programs are offering, seeing how they stack up to other interventions, and seeing how other programs are evaluating those interventions.”
Unlike most Clinton School students and their IPSP partners, this isn’t Jenkins’ first time working with LIV Lanseria. After graduating from high school in 2014, Jenkins took a gap year and moved to South Africa to work with the nonprofit. She lived on the LIV Lanseria campus and worked as a volunteer with the afterschool program.
“When I turned 18, I just moved there,” Jenkins said. “I moved on campus and lived on-site with all the volunteers and worked in the afterschool program because I had a tutoring background. It was a lot of homework help and we would try to do intentional time.”
Eventually, the leadership at LIV Lanseria asked her about building a curriculum for the afterschool program, including plans and documents for future volunteers. “That’s a lot of work,” she thought, “But I’m happy to do it.”
“I was really intentional about it,” Jenkins said of setting out to build the curriculum. “I structured the program like an educational space and not just a homework help space.”
She remembers seeking advice from two primary places. First, her mother, an early elementary educator with more than 30 years of experience.
“I would be asking my mom things like, ‘Where do my kids need to be developmentally by age 6?’” Jenkins remembers. “She would tell me what I needed to be working on with them. There would be a lot structuring the space to make it more helpful, making it look more like a classroom, putting up sight words and rules and regulations, putting up a schedule of what they can expect. I think a lot of what I learned from my mom was what a learning environment should look like so that it’s less chaotic. Especially with different age groups.”
Her second place of advice and inspiration: Pinterest.
“They don’t really teach science in South Africa in the same way we teach science in the United States,” Jenkins said. “Pinterest is great if you want to find fun science activities. We would have a science day at the end of each week. We would put Mentos in a Diet Coke, watch the eruption and ask, ‘Is this an Endo or Exo reaction?” Or we would watch ice melt, and let them talk about what was happening. Just really simple science experiments that were fun, cheap, and easy to do.”
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, all of Jenkins’ work this summer is being done remotely. While she is disappointed she couldn’t return to South Africa – “a place that I have a strong connection with because of my past experience” – she has been impressed with LIV Lanseria’s response to her project, especially as it pertains to the pandemic.
“Megan, my supervisor, told me before I started that LIV was moving from a community development organization to an organization that meets direct needs during the pandemic, because of how hard COVID has affected their community financially,” Jenkins said. “People need food, so LIV has been providing it. She is happy this project is still happening, because it helps remind the staff that the organization can go back to implement big structural, community change in the future, when this pandemic over.”
Over the next several weeks, Jenkins’ work will include building evaluation proposals for her remaining programs and creating evaluations based on the organization’s program plans. And while she doesn’t see herself working in program evaluation long-term, she is interested in consulting for nonprofits.
“I would love a job where I could empower local nonprofits to build up the structure and backing of their organizations,” Jenkins said. “It leads to better grant money and probably better interventions for the community. I also have a basis of knowledge to work from in global spaces, which is helpful.”
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