Service learning is the practical application of knowledge and skills towards meeting an identified community need. Through service, students develop and apply personal and social skills in real-life situations involving decision-making, problem-solving, initiative, responsibility and accountability for their actions.

​A minimum of 50 hours is expected to be devoted to service learning.

There are four different types of service in action:
  • Direct service 
  • Indirect service
  • Advocacy
  • Research
Direct Service
With people
  • Coach children in sports
  • Deliver meals to people living with a medical condition
  • Lead résumé-writing workshops for people who are unemployed
  • Organize or assist at a blood donation drive
  • Play music with elders to have an exchange of skills and learn about each other’s music preferences and talents, and then perform as an ensemble for others
  • Distribute plants at a farmer’s market to promote home-grown container gardens
  • Prepare and then serve food at a soup kitchen
With the environment
  • Restore a stream.
  • Prepare the soil and beds for an elementary school garden and plant with the children
  • Grow seedlings for distribution
  • Install raised-bed gardens for a senior centre
  • Establish a recycling programme at your local civic centre
  • Make a rainwater garden
With animals
  • Help at an animal shelter with data entry and dog walking
  • Assist with a pet adoption outreach programme at community events
  • Lead a workshop on pet care
  • Set up a turtle sanctuary in partnership with a community organization
Indirect Service
With people
  • Assemble a photograph exhibit about poverty for a gallery
  • Prepare meals in a soup kitchen
  • Take part in a walkathon to raise money for different humanitarian causes
  • Prepare activity kits for children for an emergency shelter
  • Write brochures for organizations
  • Build an organization’s website or provide content for an organization’s website
  • Assist with the creation of a museum exhibit
  • Make exercise videos to give to homeless shelters
  • Create a newsletter for a retirement community
  • Record audio books for people who are visually impaired
With the environment
  • Prepare signage for a local wetland
  • Grow seedlings for distribution
  • Initiate a school compost scheme to reduce food waste in landfills
  • Create a website with information about flora and fauna for a local park
With animals
  • Make zoo toys for animals
  • Collect needed supplies for a wildlife rescue centre
  • Bake dog biscuits for an animal shelter
  • Make colouring books with protection tips on local endangered animals for elementary schools and tourists
Advocacy Service
With people
  • Lead a town hall meeting on solar energy
  • Organize a letter-writing campaign for a cause
  • Host a speaker and film series to raise awareness for the community
  • Create comic strips or comic books to teach about emergency safety and readiness
  • Plan a conference to raise awareness about education equity
With the environment
  • Provide reusable water bottles to replace single-use water bottles
  • Create public service announcements on energy reduction in homes
  • Organize a flash mob to teach about recycling
  • Promote a “just use less” campaign to reduce quantities of what is put in trash and recycling bins
With animals
  • Make beach signs to protect local waterways from rubbish
  • Advocate for animals at risk at an organized public event
  • Create posters, videos and public service announcements to promote animal adoption for a shelter
Research Service
With people
  • Assist with a city-wide needs assessment by running focus groups
  • Conduct hands-on research about how interaction improves quality of life for residents at an elder care facility
  • Prepare a public service outreach process to identify local veterans willing to be interviewed, and then conduct the interviews for an historical society
  • Learn about the history of people buried in a cemetery from the 1800s to support a local museum
  • Observe play habits of children in an orphanage or refugee centre to identify what skills are developed or need support
With the environment
  • Use photography to collect images that inform about the first flush from a storm drain near your school
  • Interview administrators at local landfills to learn about community habits that support collections of trash to recycle and food waste for composting
  • Analyse items collected in a community or beach clean-up to develop a campaign (advocacy service) that prevents the items from being littered again
With animals
  • Conduct a behaviour study of zoo animals or shelter animals
  • Monitor numbers of stray animals, combine findings with interviews and surveys to determine opinions of advocates, opponents and the general public, and offer recommendations to improve local policies
  • Assist with tracking and monitoring of butterfly migratory paths

The importance of ibcp synergy

It is essential that you show synergy between your career-related subject of study, your ethical dilemma within the reflective project and your service learning. The best students will link the 3 areas of study. 

Some examples of recent CP service learning projects that made a difference in the school and local communities:

Upgrading a playground at a local elementary school
• Engineering students made calculations and prepared blueprints
• Child development students researched elementary-age play
• Culinary students planned refreshments for construction day

Designing a new, updated map of the school (engineering students)
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Increasing awareness of health issues in the community
• Health careers students created awareness brochures for the community about risk factors for diabetes and high blood pressure, and organised a health fair featuring blood pressure screenings

Supporting documents

servicelearninglearningoutcomes.docx
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File Type: docx
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sl_and_you_e.pdf
File Size: 124 kb
File Type: pdf
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To complete the service learning programme successfully, you must show evidence of achieving these learning outcomes.


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