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Office of Community Engagement IU Indianapolis

Center for Leadership Development and IUPUI prepare students for success

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IUPUI partners with Kinney Group, Inc. to provide Splunk® training

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IUPUI university-assisted Girl Talk Mentoring Program focused on teen dating violence

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Photo of students participating in Girl Talk program.

Written by Nicole Oglesby

IUPUI Office of Community Engagement received a $2,000 Mental Health America- Indiana chapter grant award for the Girl Talk Mentoring program to recognize children’s mental health awareness month 2017.

April and May focused on educating middle school girls on “teen dating violence” with a Domestic Violence Coalition’s interactive presentation at Indianapolis Public Schools — School 56, 51 and KIPP Indy Public Schools.

Photo of participants in Girl Talk program. The campaign was made complete with a special presentation by the from girls to the Julian Center. The girls prepared “Feel Good Bags” for the Julian Center to underscore their learnings and serve others as it relates to relationships. The “Feel Good Bags” included beautiful soaps and lotions for women that come to the Julian Center, and were made possible by a generous donation of products by Gilchrist and Soames.

Two facts that stood out for the girls that hit home were that violent behavior typically begins between the ages of 12-18 and that one and three adolescents in the U.S. is a victim of physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse from a dating partner.

The Girl Talk program was highlighted by KIPP Indy when they presented to the Indianapolis Charter School Board. They were proud to announce that since the inception of the Girl Talk Program they have experienced a 71% reduction in middle school suspensions. This is one of the goals for the mentoring program.

For more information about Girl Talk or to become a mentor contact IUPUI Family, School and Neighborhood Engagement at 317-278-2000 or email at IN-FSNEWeb@exchange.iu.edu.

 

LISC Indianapolis receives IUPUI Spirit of Philanthropy Award

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Written by Susan Kigamwa

 The Office of Community Engagement recognized the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Indianapolis during the 2017 IUPUI Spirit of Philanthropy Awards Ceremony held on April 4, 2017.

This university-wide event honors individuals, corporations and foundations that have contributed to IUPUI programs through gifts and voluntary services.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Indianapolis is the local office of the country’s largest community development corporation dedicated to transforming distressed neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities—good places to work, do business, and raise children.

IUPUI Office of Community Engagement has received more than $100,000 in the last two years to support the development of the River West Great Place on Michigan Street a mile west from the IUPUI campus; working together to make transformational change, improving the quality of lives in the community.

To receive the award on behalf of LISC Indianapolis was Deputy Director, Tedd Grain.

Students from IUPUI and beyond bring health and legal services to an underserved Indianapolis neighborhood

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Written by Jennifer Boehm

The IU Student Outreach Clinic (IUSOC) was created half a decade ago to bring medical services to Indianapolis’s poor and underserved. But it’s hard to say who’s gotten the most out of the arrangement – the near-eastside neighborhood that receives everything from free medical checkups to physical therapy to dental work, or the Indiana University students who provide them.

Headquartered at the Neighborhood Fellowship Church on the Indianapolis near eastside, the clinic offers free primary care to the area’s underserved and uninsured. The surrounding community contains approximately 15,000 homes, with 50 percent of residents living at or below the poverty level. Not surprisingly, medical services can be spotty, due to everything ranging from lack of insurance to transportation.

The seed for the facility was planted in 2008, during the darkest days of the Great Recession. Dr. Javier Sevilla-Mártir, Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Director for Hispanic Health and Global Health in the IU Department of Family Medicine, struck up a friendship with James Strietelmeier, pastor of the Neighborhood Fellowship Church. The activist minister had turned his place of worship into a de facto community center, offering everything from a clothing bank to free Sunday dinners, which led Sevilla-Mártir to ask if they might have room for one more community project.

“I said, ‘Hey Jim, what do you think about having a student-run free clinic in this church?’” Sevilla-Mártir recalled. “He couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘We have been praying for this for 12 years.’”

The IU Student Outreach Clinic came to fruition shortly after this conversation and has developed into a successful program that truly assists the community.

The IUSOC sees patients every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Treatment is overseen by IU faculty, but most of the clinic’s day-to-day operations are handled by boards composed of student volunteers. There’s a myriad of university departments and outside agencies contributing to the project, including IU School of Nursing, IU School of Medicine, Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, IU School of Dentistry,  IU School of Health and Rehabilitation Science Department of Physical Therapy, the University of Indianapolis Krannert School of Physical Therapy, Department of Occupational Therapy, IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indiana Legal Services, and IU School of Social Work.

Jason W. White, fourth-year medical student and 2014 Medical Board Chair of the IU Student Outreach Clinic, says he “got hooked” by the project as a first-year student. The early years of medical school are mostly filled with book learning, but he longed for a chance to help patients. White said. “I volunteered and I really loved it and I kept going back. I’d love to continue working with the underserved. I could even see myself working in a clinic like this, where I could really do some good.”

Dental work also plays a big part in the clinic – so big, in fact, that dentistry students operate from a separate location a few blocks from the Neighborhood Fellowship Church and offer services every-other-Saturday which include, among other things, free cleanings, filling and extractions for roughly two-dozen patients.

“I feel that we’re really developing a dental home for the community,” said Virginia Young, fourth-year dental student and the clinic’s Student Chair. “We’re seeing a lot of patients come back for continued care. One of the most rewarding aspects is relieving people of pain, either with a filling or a tooth extraction. Relieving pain is wonderful.”

There’s already anecdotal evidence that IUSOC care is both improving community health and cutting medical expenses. Pastor Strietelmeier reported that before the clinic opened, he found himself shuttling parishioners to receive medical attention frequently and since the clinic arrived he has only had so two or three times.

For the community, the benefits of the clinic go far beyond affordable medical care. Sevilla-Mártir thinks it also reassures residents that they have a lifeline to get help, and gives them a chance to build relationships and friendships with the young professionals staffing the facility.

Sevilla-Mártir would also like to see the clinic concept expand its geographic reach by opening other Indianapolis facilities. And why stop there? The South Bend and Terre Haute satellite IU campuses have already set up their own, and Bloomington is looking into the idea. Sevilla-Mártir would like to see one at every IU-affiliated campus around the state.

“So now we just wish and hope that one day all nine campuses will have a student clinic,” Sevilla-Mártir said. “Expansion is the main plan for the future.”

SOURCE River West Entrepreneurship Center facility opening this spring

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Source River West logoWritten by Teresa Francis

SOURCE River West Entrepreneurship Center is a catalyst project of the River West Great Place initiative. Its goal is to create an environment where entrepreneurs are welcome and contribute to an equitable and thriving neighborhood business sector by fostering place-based entrepreneurship through coaching, education, training, and resources to support aspiring and existing entrepreneurs.

While IUPUI serves as founding partner and fiscal agent for the launch of this work, the intent is for this project to stand on its own in the River West area. SOURCE River West has partnered with the local Westside Community Development Corporation, with support from LISC Indianapolis, to rehabilitate the new space at 2230 West Michigan Street that will serve as a physical hub for aspiring and existing business owners in the area. An open house for SOURCE River West is being planned for May 2, 2017 from 5-8pm during Small Business Week.

Through partnership with the Indy Chamber’s Business Ownership Initiative (BOI), foundational business courses and coaching have already begun with the first Kauffman Business Owner Education Series course completed last fall and the next course to kickoff April 13. For more information or to register for the Kauffman course, click HERE.

New Director of SOURCE River West

IUPUI is pleased to announce the hiring of Mark A. Roger as the first director for the SOURCE River West Entrepreneurship Center.  Mark was chosen after a four-month search by a committee that included members from the Near Westside, LISC, and IUPUI staff and faculty, and began his work as director on February 20, 2017.

Mark’s expertise is entrepreneur education and assisting those aspiring to be small business owners throughout Indiana.  Since 1993, Mark has worked with entrepreneurs from “start-up plan” to “right-size plan” to “succession plan.”  He is a graduate of Indiana University-Bloomington (4th generation Hoosier), a Myers-Briggs Certified Instructor, and past columnist for the IBJ.  His personal experience as a small business owner provides a unique perspective to help his clients identify real opportunities, risks, and timing to make sound decisions.

Most recently, Mark worked as a franchise broker providing entrepreneur due diligence and business principle education for the SBA, the ISBDC and SCORE statewide.  He founded the E Round Table – a public-private entrepreneur educator collective and recently began his second season leading the successful Entrepreneurship Carmel Discussion Series at the Carmel Public Library.  Mark is an active civic leader, both locally and nationally, focusing on economic development, leadership development, and servant leadership.

“We are looking forward to creating a space where business ownership inspiration, education and coaching are readily available – from start-up to scale-up,” Roger said. “One of my favorite sayings is that the entrepreneur is the artist of the business community – and it’s important for artists who have actually done the artwork to work with younger artists on their business plan. A passion of mine is introducing promising entrepreneurs to the brushes, canvases and techniques for them to create their own work of art.”

For more information on the SOURCE River West Entrepreneurship Center, visit http://www.sourceindy.org/ or contact Mark Roger at maroger@iupui.edu.

IUPUI partners to host Community Health and Resource Fair in the Martindale Brightwood area

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Written by Teresa Francis

IUPUI students, a faculty member, and a community advocate collaborated to create the Martindale-Brightwood Community Health and Resource Fair to improve access to and raise awareness of resources in the neighborhood. The fair will be held Saturday, March 25, 11:00 am – 2:00 pm at 37 Place, 2605 East 25th Street in Indianapolis.

According to SAVI from the Polis Center at IUPUI, in 2013, the average income in the Martindale Brightwood area was $23,825 compared to $41,361 for all of Marion County. Additionally, the community had 25% less employer-based health coverage, 10% more deaths by accident, and 9% more persons with a disability across all age ranges, indicating a need for greater access to health prevention and early intervention resources.

In acknowledgement of the social determinants of health that impact members of the Martindale Brightwood community, Registered Nurse to Master of Science in Nursing students Lindsey May and Emily Wolf, faculty member Dr. Wanda Thruston, and IUPUI Office of Community Engagement staff member Mary Studley identified key stakeholders in the community.

“Our approach was to look at the assets that are currently available in the community and to build on what was already there,” said Studley. “This event is an effort to build relationships between the residents and community-serving agencies so they better serve the community. It’s about building engagement so it’s not a one-time thing.”

The community resource fair will provide access to multiple health prevention and early intervention resources with an emphasis on pediatrics and geriatrics in response to the needs of the community. Proposed direct services include immunizations for kids, booster immunizations for middle school students as well as podiatry checks and neurology checks for senior citizens. Additional services that will be provided will include services hosted by IUPUI student outreach programs. “Good foot care for senior citizens is a front line of defense to prevent falls and to improved health,” said Studley.

This event will not only provide direct services to the community, but will also serve to increase visibility of resources and help lay the foundation for partnerships among resources to better serve their constituents.

“From a university standpoint, my hope is to create a storyboard that can be presented to other faculty to spark ideas to become more involved in the community,” said Thruston.

Thruston is working to establish an ongoing relationship with the Martindale Brightwood area to address health disparities and to conduct focused research.

“Community members are confirming the need for the health fair. They have expressed to me that they are really glad that it’s happening,” said Studley.

For more information on the fair, please contact Lindsey May at ljmay@iupui.edu or Emily Wolf at estorkma@iu.edu.

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