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

Centering the Marginalized

In this week’s blog, Zachary Sexton, McCarthy Fellow in San Francisco, describes the importance of communities dictating their own priorities and developing their own solutions. Keep reading to learn more about his experience with the Tenderloin Community Action Plan, empowering neighborhood residents to determine their own basic needs from their lived experience. I am Zachary…

Honoring Our Own Divinity

In this week’s blog, Alyssa Traina ’25, Politics major with a double minor in Public Relations and Legal Studies, reflects on Sister Destiny’s visit to their class with storytelling and Jazz. Read more about “H.O.O.D.” as Honoring Our Own Divinity and her wisdom in using radical love to fight for our communities. Under the bright…

Photo of the authors whose book is the subject of the blog

Craft of Community Enagagement

In what came to her as a natural growth from previous projects, McCarthy Center Director for Community-Engaged Learning, Star Moore, found it necessary to craft a tool-kit for the art of service-learning as a means to guide faculty through the theoretical foundations of community engagement, the practical process of designing and implementing a community-engaged course,…

Sheryl Davis pictured speaking after receiving her hononarary doctorate

Through Courage, Community & Creativity

We are honored to showcase the inspiring words of Sheryl Davis, USF alum, McCarthy Center Board Member and Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. She was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate by USF and spoke on the need to share our gifts, through courage, community and creativity I wrestled with what to…

Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning

I am thrilled to share the outcome of a collaborative project between myself and McCarthy Center Director, Dave Donahue, that has been years in the making! The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning: What You Need to Know for Transformative Learning and Real Social Change is a book designed for students to read in the first…

Join our April Day of Action

Tamara Walker is the Outreach Manager for the Buchanan Mall Initiative at Citizen Film, a non-profit documentary media organization and an Engage San Francisco community partner, based in the Western Addition. On Saturday, April 14th, Citizen Film, Community Grows, the Rosa Parks Senior Center and a team of neighborhood volunteers will be rolling up our…

“Success” in the Western Addition

Michael Anderson, Campus-Community Liaison / Engage San Francisco At any given moment we suffer the curse of being banished to the present. The totality of human beings on the planet right now are given no option other than right now. At no points in one’s life is an individual least cognizant of this fact than…

Students in front of community center mural

Building Community Through Engage SF

For several years now, my Engage San Francisco colleagues and I have taken students, staff, faculty, supporters, and administrators on walks in the Western Addition. We intentionally don’t call them tours, as this is the neighborhood we work with, and community partners and community members join us on the walks. Most importantly, the word ‘tour’ rings of…