Community Partnerships | Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good

A Year of Literacy Highlights

This week’s blog previews Engage San Francisco (ESF) Literacy’s Year End Report detailing the program’s impact on their partner schools for the 2020-21 academic year. Literacy Program Coordinator, Dresden Frazier-Smith, and Data Science Graduate Assistant, Cassidy Newberry, assess how tutors work with students and support teachers. Read the highlights of Engage San Francisco Literacy’s year…

Lifting our Community’s Voices

We are honored to have been awarded the Jesuit Foundation Grant, given to academic programming, curriculum development, and research projects which address USF’s Jesuit Catholic mission. This funding helps to underwrite the first year of “Amplifying San Francisco Voices: Building Bridges in CommUNITY Conversations,” a series of interdisciplinary dialogues that examine the major historical and…

Connecting Students with Community

In this week’s blog, we hear from Jocelynn Esteban, the Program Manager for City Youth Now, a non profit organization in San Francisco that provides programs and services for youth in the juvenile justice and foster care system. Jocelynn participated in our most recent cohort of Community Partner Co-Educator (CPCE) Fellows. Learn about her experience…

How To Be a Changemaker

While we are all busy preparing for a year of in-person learning, the Center wants to remind students that they can begin to explore their roles as Changemakers for the common good. Changemakers on campus and in community become well-informed and civically engaged about social justice issues impacting society at large. Here are 10 ways…

Designing Our Vision of Justice

Last month, a newly formed Mural Design committee gathered for the McCarthy Center’s first in-person meeting since the Center closed in Spring of 2019. The committee made up of Center students, community partners, staff and faculty, were tasked with conceptualizing a full wall-sized mural to be installed in the Masonic Building Office #103. Precita Eyes…

Supporting Year-Round Literacy

Throughout this month, we have highlighted our summer learning partnerships in the USF/ Heart To Heart/ Mo’MAGIC Summer Literacy program and the Summer Academy Program. In this week’s blog, we hear from our Director of Engage San Francisco, Karin Cotterman, about the literacy initiative our Center works on year round. Since its formal launch in…

Re-Engaging for the Fall

In this week’s blog, we continue to celebrate National Summer Learning Week with a post from the Summer Academy Program (SAP) Program Director, Imène Ghernati and student teachers from Catholic and private independent schools. SAP is a 4 week summer program for 6-8 graders, created as partnership between USF’s School of Education and Gateway Public…

Empowering Youth through Literacy

Since its launch in 2014, Engage San Francisco has focused on building meaningful relationships with individuals, schools, nonprofits, and service providers in the Western Addition/Fillmore neighborhood. One consistent aspect of our work has been our literacy efforts. In partnership with the School of Education, we have continued to develop our shared, long-term vision to provide year-round literacy and learning support in…