COMMUNITY MAPPING GUIDE OVERVIEW

Students from around the country are working on civic issues-- from serving in middle schools to organizing campuses around eliminating sweatshops-- to improve communities and the broader world. As a way to support those efforts and support the broader goal of helping you take action on the issues you care most deeply about, we have created this community mapping activity to help you identify the potential assets and allies that exist on your campus and also help you determine the “gaps” on your campus. After this initial mapping, you will be able to develop strategies for action and find additional resources to promote student involvement and the issues you care about. Remember, it is most often institutions that are apathetic, not students. After using this mapping tool you will be able to hold your campus accountable for providing more opportunities.

Mapping is a core community building skill that is a way of life for the best community organizers (See Historical Background section). When you hear the word “mapping” you probably think of a traditional street map that tells you where something is located and how to get there. Community mapping does the same thing, except the purpose is to evaluate your campus is regard to student voice and student civic engagement. It will also help you locate assets for getting involved and making democratic change on your campus. It can help you get started on implementing desired civic changes. Most importantly, mapping is a tool that initiates a community building process on a campus that helps locate allies and resources so that change is possible.

This mapping tool is layered so that it can be used for a quick analysis of your campus; or it can be used as a means of longer-term community mapping of campus-community connections. Some students will stop after the initial mapping with an assessment of campus and have recommendations for action; others will see the initial mapping simply as the start of an intensive community mapping process on campus. Both will be valuable and useful.

We suggest organizing this activity with a group of 5 to 25 students from a single campus. Finding the right group of students depends on you and your campus: you may organize it with a group of students in a class ; a group of students in your residence hall; a student organization on campus; members of student government; or even a group of friends. You may also want to get the assistance of the community service director on your campus, or a sympathetic faculty member. These “elders” will bring an institutional memory that other students may not have. They can inform you of the history and the tradition of students voice and action on campus.

The Community Mapping Activity I through Activity V (without the interviews) can be done in less than 2 hours. If you do interviews, each interview will probably take up to 1 hour each. However, the Community Mapping activity should be thought of as a community building process, and time will vary depending on how useful it is for you on your campus.

After the initial Community Mapping there are many ways to proceed, including interviews, conversations with other students who are mapping their campus, regional conversations about your institutions, writing an article to the student newspaper, meeting with faculty and / or administrators, or presenting your maps to a group of community partners.