Posted: May 12th, 2015

My Civic Project: (Helping Homeless Veterans in America)

My Civic Project: (Helping Homeless Veterans in America)

About the Civic Project:
You are asked to undertake a civic project and to write an eight-entry report about your efforts. Any type of volunteer work is acceptable for this project. Examples of places to volunteer would be homeless shelters, nursing homes, hospitals, Habitat for Humanity, the Boy and Girl Scouts, churches, mosques, temples, and so on. This civic project can be a continuation of volunteering you’ve done in the past, but all of the volunteering that you write about in your journal must have been done during the current term.

The Eight Entries of the Civic Project Report:
Entry 1: Write an entry of 300-400 words minimum on why you chose your project. Discuss the life or work experiences that may have influenced your selection, including whether these experiences were positive or negative. Consider how issues of community, government or individual responsibility, leadership, productivity, problem-solving, work ethic, and/or ambition might have affected your project selection. Most importantly, explain why your project is important to you, as well as to the larger community. Label this entry “Selection of the Civic Project.”
Entry 2: Write an entry of 300-400 words minimum explaining how your project relates to two of the course objectives, Objective 5 & 6. See the list of course objectives below. Be sure to explain why you feel these objectives are important. Label this entry “Civic Project Objective.”
Note: The purpose of this entry is not to tell what you think the objective of your Civic Project was; rather, it is, as stated above, to relate your project to two of the course objectives.
Signature Series Course Objectives:
1. Analyze America’s founding documents and relevant research and evaluate core values and beliefs that inform American government, democratic institutions, and culture.
2. Analyze the concept of limited government, its history, and its expression in the U.S. Constitutions, and evaluate concepts such as originalism, federalism, natural rights, enumerated powers, and checks and balances.
3. Analyze the principles of free market economics and explain the consanguinity of our democratic republic and our capitalistic economic system.
4. Analyze the issues of gender and race in terms of their historical, social, and cultural significance, and their relation to constitutional issues.
5. Analyze the changes that have occurred in the American family, and evaluate their impact, both positive and negative, on American culture.
6. Analyze the idea of voluntarism in terms of the citizen’s role in addressing human need in a civil society.

Entries 3-7: Narrate your experiences on the project each week for five weeks, and you also relate your project experiences to the readings listed above, as well as any other course readings you think appropriate. A minimum of 300-400 words must be written each week. These entries should simply be labeled with the appropriate entry number(s): Entry 3, Entry 4, and so on.
Entry 8: For the concluding entry of 350-450 words, labeled ”Conclusions,” summarize your project, its relation to the course themes and readings, and your feelings about your project experiences.

Important Notes on the Assignments:
1. Write in Arial 12 font, unless otherwise directed by your instructor.
2. This week you simply make connections or links between the ideas in ALL of the required KSSR and Internet readings and your experiences as a volunteer in the course of your civic project. There is no need to engage in the thoroughgoing critiquing of ideas in the assigned readings that we have done in previous weeks, though you certainly may critique ideas in the readings if you wish.
3. Always name the author whose ideas you are discussing. This is the author of the specific reading, not the editors of your text.
4. Provide in-text citations for all ideas, opinions, and facts derived from the course readings, whether you simply refer to them, paraphrase them (put them entirely into your own words), or quote them. Place the in-text citation at the end of your sentence but before the period that ends your sentence. The in-text citation should give the author’s last name (unless you’ve used it already in your sentence), the year of publication for your text (found on the title page), and the page number from the text (using p. for page or pp. for more than one page).
5. Provide a References page at the end of your essay that includes bibliographic references for every reading cited in your essay. Center the word References at the top of the page (do not underline it, place it in quotation marks, or place it in bold font). Follow APA procedure. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers excellent detailed explanations of APA Style requirements. This is the URL for the Purdue OWL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01
The Reader is an anthology, so that is the type of bibliographic reference that should be used. Here is an example:
Emerson, R. (2008). Self-reliance. In E. Rauchut & K. Mason (Eds.),
Kirkpatrick signature series reader (pp. 374-383). Bellevue, NE:
Bellevue University Press. (Original work published 1841)
Note1: The first line of the reference begins at the left margin. All subsequent lines should be indented one tab.
Note 2: Do not include bibliographic references for any reading not cited in your essay. If you leave out one or more readings, your references list should honestly reflect that.