PACE_CENTER

Civic engagement activities organized and sponsored directly by the Pace Center include:

• Community House
  Community House volunteers work to close the achievement gap that separates low-income minority students from their advantaged neighbors in local schools by providing programs that bolster early childhood literacy, promote the mastery of fundamental academic skills, and create early awareness of post-secondary opportunities for underserved minority youth.

• Student Volunteers Council (SVC)
  The SVC is a student-led organization that sponsors more than 40 weekly volunteer projects with community organizations in Princeton, Trenton, and surrounding areas. The SVC also supports summer service internships and alternative service break-trips and organizes Community Action, a pre-orientation service program for incoming freshmen.

• Community Action
  The Community Action program organized by the SVC introduces freshmen to Princeton and the community through an immersive week of service before orientation begins. CA students live in the same communities where they build and refurbish houses, cook and serve food in soup kitchens, labor in community gardens, and work with local children. The goal is to instill and nurture an ethic of service as an integral part of the Princeton experience and, additionally, to create relationships that will lead students to continue their involvement through any of the dozens of sustained service opportunities that are available on campus.

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• Breakout Princeton Civic Action Trips
  Breakout Princeton trips are week-long opportunities to learn about and take action on important public issues with other Princeton students.

• Pace Council on Civic Values (PCCV)
  The Pace Council for Civic Values (PCCV) is a selective student group affiliated with the Pace Center composed of civically engaged students who promote greater civic awareness and action within Princeton University.

• Social entrepreneurship opportunities
  Social entrepreneurship is a form of civic engagement that addresses public problems through the creation of new organizations or the reorientation of existing ones. Pace Center opportunities in this area include the not-for-credit Social Entrpreneurship Seminar.

• Political action programs
  Pace’s political engagement efforts provide opportunities for experiential learning about the political process.

• Educational outreach in the New Jersey correctional system
  The Pace Center hosts two programs through which volunteers teach and tutor in New Jersey prisons. Through the Princeton Prisons Project, volunteers teach college-credit-bearing courses at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Yardville and the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton. The Petey Greene Prisoner Assistance Program sends volunteers to provide basic-skills tutoring in math, reading, and writing at the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in Bordentown.

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• Internships
  Public service internships offer opportunities for students to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world situations, develop leadership skills, and contribute to the organizations and communities where they work. The Pace Center advises students interested in these internships, offers some established internship opportunities, and also provides guidance to groups of students who want to start their own summer service project.

• Fellowships
  The Pace Center coordinates two-year postgraduate fellowships with nonprofit organizations that aim to protect the environment and build environmental sustainability, bring an environmental focus to building community capacity and increasing the self-sufficiency of community residents, or deal with prisoner reentry issues. Fellows have an opportunity to gain valuable professional experience while exploring a career in the public interest and making a genuine contribution toward advancing the organizations’ objectives.