Student Leaders: Urban Involvement

What's New

Summer Reading

John Perkins Center student leaders are reading Restoring At-Risk Communities: Doing it Together and Doing it Right, by John Perkins, this summer. If you'd like to read along, e-mail owen@spu.edu for more information.

Urban Involvement Partnerships

Find out which Seattle-area organization Urban Involvement serves — and how you can connect, too.

Urban Involvement connects SPU students to a variety of community organizations — through weekly service teams and quarterly immersion experiences. Teams are facilitated by student leaders under the mentorship of the John Perkins Center staff.

• Empowering Youth & Families Outreach
• Mekong Kids! Learning Center
• Neighborhood House - Tutoring
• Oasis Children's Ministry, Shoreline FMC
• Sacred Heart Shelter
• UGM Kids Club
• Union Gospel Mission: White Center
• UGM-YROC Tutoring
• White Center Dance Team
• Children's Hospital Outreach
• New Horizons Ministries
• Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center

Interested in Urban Involvement? Contact the UI Core.

 

Refugee Project

Experience the Life of a Refugee

In partnership with World Relief, Urban Involvement presents the Refugee Project, an immersion into the experiences and challenges faced by refugees as they enter America.

 

The event includes discussion of the Christian response to the refugee crisis, a hands-on simulation of the refugee's journey through the process of entering the United States, and dinner with a recently arrived refugee family. When you participate, you’ll

 

• Discuss the Christian response to the refugee crisis.
• Be part of a hands-on simulation of the refugee's journey through the process of entering the United States.
• Have dinner with a recently-arrived refugee family.

The event takes place twice a year: Autumn and Spring quarters in Seattle's International District.

Click here for pictures from the Spring 2008 Refugee Project.

Support a Refugee Family

World Relief welcomes refugees escaping persecution from all over the world, including Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Burma and Burundi. Volunteers and Interns from SPU can join World Relief’s vision “to be the hands, feet and face of Christ to refugees” by mentoring refugee families, helping them learn English, and accompanying them on their journeys between cultures.

Sign Up!

To sign up or for more information about the Refugee Project or to volunteer with World Relief, contact Lindsey Killebrew (peaceout@spu.edu).

 

See a video (via iTunes) of the Refugee Project.

Read more about The Refugee Project at the SPU parents’ and families’ site, In the Loop.

 

Urban Plunge

Urban Plunge is a five-day immersion experience designed to give participants a taste of what it is like to be homeless and what resources are available to Seattle's homeless population.

• Nights are spent sleeping in a downtown church.
• Days are filled with explorations as participants walk the streets.
• Learn from representatives of local social service agencies.
• Experience some of the challenges the homeless face.
• Urban Plunge takes place during Christmas and Spring breaks.

See a video (via iTunes) of Urban Plunge.

Join us for Christmas Break Urban Plunge, December 12-16, 2008 or Spring Break Urban Plunge, March 19-23, 2009.

For more information on Urban Plunge, contact Zack Olson

(olsonz@spu.edu).

“I went in thinking that this was an opportunity for me to be Christ to these people. What I discovered was that they had become Christ to me." — Mike, sophomore

Find out what SPU students are saying about their time on the December 2008 Urban Plunge.