Course

Course Summary
Credit Type:
Course
ACE ID:
CNCS-0005
Organization's ID:
POV 201
Location:
Classroom-based
Length:
(32 hours over 11 weeks)
Dates Offered:
Credit Recommendation & Competencies
Level Credits (SH) Subject
Lower-Division Baccalaureate 2 Sociology
Description

Objective:

The course objective is to help students to better understand the history, causes and consequences of poverty in the United States while developing realistic expectations about what an individual or an organization can do to reduce it.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Identify resources available for people living in poverty in your community and develop effective means for them to access those resources
  • Create a specific profile of the people who are living in poverty in your community
  • Define the term 'poverty' and compare the wide variety of measures that have been used to describe it
  • Recount the history of poverty in the U.S
  • Critique differing theories about the causes of poverty ('structural' vs. 'behavioral') and explain how the causes might fluctuate over time, geography, and individual circumstance
  • Explain the consequences of poverty-physiological, psychological, social, cultural, and economic-on individuals, families, and communities
  • Judge the relative effectiveness of policies and programs that have sought to reduce poverty or to develop human potential
  • Utilize your new knowledge of poverty to help your organization build the community's capacity for change

General Topics:

  • Other ways to think about poverty, your community and the official poverty rate, behavioral versus structural explanations of poverty, exploring the connections between behavioral and structural explanations of poverty, the consequences of poverty, community development approaches, national policy and poverty, yesterday and today, how VISTAS build capacity
Instruction & Assessment

Instructional Strategies:

  • Audio Visual Materials
  • Case Studies
  • Practical Exercises
Supplemental Materials

Other offerings from Corporation for National and Community Service

(CNCS-0002)