Child Poverty, Racism, and Inequality

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The course focuses on promoting equity for children through a community engagement experience that offers supervised engaged learning opportunities for students to work with leaders in churches, schools, sports programs, and restorative justice outreach. The course begins with an interdisciplinary inquiry into the causes of generational poverty. The first part of the course explores the social, economic, and cultural causes of poverty. The second part examines the challenges that schools and colleges; youth sports programs; public health institutions; and the juvenile justice system face in serving children living in high poverty neighborhoods. The final part of the course focuses on collaborative approaches to stopping the cycle of poverty.