Social Innovation Generation: Student Leadership Initiative (SIG: SLI) is part of California Campus Compact’s three-year initiative that is catalyzing colleges and universities to aid in the state’s recovery and renewal. SIG: SLI is designed to support new and innovative student-initiated, student-led service or service-learning projects that will result in change-making action to help those who have been hardest hit by California’s economic crisis and to help California emerge from the current economic crisis with a more innovative, green and sustainable economic future.

Recipients of subgrants for the period of January 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011 are:

California State University, Chico at which students are creating and implementing the Chico Homeless Advocates program. The program is acting as a catalyst to recruit, screen and train student volunteers to staff local non-profit organizations serving the homeless.

University of California, Los Angeles at which students are promoting sustainable food systems. UCLA’s E3: Ecology, Economy and Equity student group is partnering with Farm to School, a non-profit organization that promotes healthy eating and improving school nutrition by connecting K-12 schools with local farms and maintaining school gardens. Through the partnership, students are restarting school gardens and sustainable food programs in communities that have been most adversely impacted by California’s economic downturn.

University of Southern California at which students are developing a new initiative that ties into the campus’s well-established alternative spring break program. The new initiative focuses on intense immersion experiences planned by students in collaboration with community leaders after engaging in community mapping and dialogues to assess how local non-profit organizations have been impacted by the economic downturn. Students and community partners will plan alternative spring break activities that will support these non-profit organizations and fill the gap left by budget cuts.

For more information, please contact Piper McGinley.

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California Campus Compact gratefully acknowledges the Corporation for National and Community Service, Learn and Serve America Higher Education for its significant support in making the Social Innovation Generation grant initiative possible.