Community Engagement
What is Social Learning Lab Community Engagement?
The Social Learning Lab is launching efforts to build stronger community-based relationships with parents and young children. Our goal is to enhance our role in our communities and schools beyond data collection and to really connect with community member. We hope to join child-focused educational programs, lead educational panels, and team up with community organizations to be more present in the Greater Boston Area.
We hope to form partnerships with 3 goals, to Serve, Share, and Play with the community.
Serve- includes community service efforts that will allow researchers to interact with community members as community members. This could be volunteering at public education centers, participating at events for children, or teaming up with fundraisers for early education programs.
Share- comprises the Learn Lab’s efforts to share knowledge directly and enhance community members’ experiences with academic information. This could include attendance at local science or research fairs, panels with high school psychology students, workshops and presentations with partnering universities, or information sessions with parents.
Play- means to lead games with children in a more interactive arena, such as a community center, library, or hospital. Through play, we hope to advance children’s and parents’ contact with researchers through creative games in environments divorced from study.
Our Current Community Partners Include:
SoWa Open Market
Fenway Community Center
Operation P.E.A.C.E.
If you are interested in partnering with the Social Learning Lab, or have a great idea of what our next partnership should be, please email learnlab@bu.edu !
SoWa Vintage Market
Our team met with parents, kids, and community members at the SoWa Open Market. We loved being able to share our research and play a few games with all of you!
KidZone at the Fenway Community Center
We were kindly invited to help out at the Fenway Community Center and Operation P.E.A.C.E.’s monthly Kidzone event. We helped create and facilitate interactive games and activities for the children and parents that let kids explore their natural curiosity. It was great to see so many parents and children, and to explore the Fenway community more!
Voluntary at Community Servings Soup Kitchen
The lab members went to volunteer at Community Servings Soup Kitchen, completing a variety of tasks including: ladling food, labelling containers, packing boxes etc, which were delivered to people with illnesses to help them have a healthy diet.
