JHU Schools Increase Funding for Award-Winning Student Center That Partners With Baltimore City Nonprofits

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With additional dollars, SOURCE will expand work to support Baltimore

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing are significantly increasing their support of the Student Outreach Resource Center (SOURCE) in order to strengthen their partnerships with community organizations across Baltimore.

Founded in 2005, SOURCE is an award-winning community engagement and service-learning center that links Hopkins students, staff and faculty to more than 100 partner organizations in the community. In the past decade, 7,623 Hopkins public health, nursing and medical students have contributed more than 200,000 hours of volunteer service through SOURCE.

The two schools will add an additional $200,000 to SOURCE’s current annual budget of roughly $344,000. The new funding will allow SOURCE to expand current partnerships in Baltimore and develop new ones.

Among SOURCE’s many partnerships are:

  • SOURCE HIV Counseling and Testing Program, which trains and certifies Johns Hopkins students to serve as testers with STAR (Sisters Together and Reaching), the Harriet Lane Clinic, and the Johns Hopkins Emergency Department.
  • SOURCE Service Scholars Program, which trains student leaders to support community initiatives and recruit and mentor additional student volunteers. Scholars have supported 37 nonprofits, including the International Rescue Committee, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, Newborn Holistic Ministries, Thread and the Baltimore Curriculum Project.
  • The Connection Community Consultants Program builds small teams of Hopkins volunteers to complete short-term projects that have been identified by community partners. Seventy-seven Connection projects have been completed, including the development of program evaluation tools with Maryland New Directions, grant application assistance with Episcopal Refugee and Immigrant Center Alliance (ERICA), survey data analysis with Banner Neighborhoods and an updated personnel handbook with National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) – Metropolitan Baltimore.

SOURCE has also assisted with 60 academic course offerings to integrate service-learning into the curriculum. Service-learning is a method of teaching, from a social justice perspective, to help community organizations meet their needs while, at the same time, training future health professionals. Some of these courses include Data Analysis for Public Policy, Program Planning for Health Behavior Change and Ethnographic Fieldwork.

“This new investment will help SOURCE to strengthen and expand partnerships across the city,” says Mindi Levin, MS, the founding director of SOURCE. “It will allow us to meet the incredible interest in collaboration to address the health and social needs of our city.”

Levin is one of four full-time staffers at SOURCE. The new investment will provide two more full-time staff people and allow SOURCE to partner with more nonprofits, train and support additional faculty and community partners in service-learning teaching methods and offer a greater selection of scholarly community engagement experiences to students. In addition to the schools of Nursing and Public Health, SOURCE draws students and funding from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Our School is committed to progress in the health of Baltimore,” says Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH ’87, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This increased investment reflects that commitment and our goal of creating long-term partnerships with more community organizations to make change.”

Adds Patricia M. Davidson, RN, PhD, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing: “We are excited about the expansion of SOURCE. Our School has a strong commitment to working with communities to make a difference and also to prepare our students to work efficiently and effectively in Baltimore. This is a critical time for change and community engagement and we are a proud partner of SOURCE and the Baltimore community.”

SOURCE has been recognized widely for its work. Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake named April 23, 2015 as Johns Hopkins University SOURCE Day in the city. The Maryland Public Health Association gave SOURCE its Outstanding Public Health Service Award in 2013. Levin received the regional Institutional Leadership Award in October from the Maryland-DC Campus Compact for her work leading the organization.

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Media contact for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Stephanie Desmon at 410-955-7619 or sdesmon1@jhu.edu.

Media contact for the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing: Tammy L. Berwanger at 410-502-3172 or tberwanger@jhu.edu.