By this fall, The Facing Project will spread to 70 new communities across the US thanks, in part, to a partnership with state Campus Compacts. This will bring the total number of Facing Project communities to over 100. By next year, nearly 7,000 volunteers from across the country will have engaged with Facing Projects, and over 2,000 first-person stories will be used to create community conversations for change.
What does this mean for you?
The fourteen state Campus Compacts we’ve partnered with will each offer three to five Facing Projects to their member institutions with the affiliation fees waived. If your campus is a Campus Compact member in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, the Mountain West (Colorado & Wyoming), North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, or Wisconsin, you are eligible to apply by submitting an abstract to your state Campus Compact office by their deadline.
Selected Facing Projects will receive:
- The Facing Project Toolkit – The Toolkit is a guide to help campuses/communities plan and launch their Facing Project from A to Z. The 70+ page Toolkit consists of examples, worksheets, checklists, consent forms, recruitment flyers, and other templates.
- Web Hosting – Each campus/community receives their own website, with their own unique URL, through The Facing Project that tells their community’s story and connects them to other campuses/communities around the world doing Facing Projects. The Facing Project will host this website for one year.
- Web Site Training – Training on how to access the site and upload content.
- Writer Training – Facing Project staff train all project writers.
- Connectors – Each campus/community is assigned a Facing Project expert who walks organizers through the Toolkit, is available for questions/brainstorming, and is their liaison with the Facing Project HQ throughout the project development.
- Editors – Each campus/community is assigned a Facing HQ editing team who reviews each project’s stories and provides feedback.
This $1,500 value is yours for FREE if your project is one of the three to five selected in each state.
Upcoming deadlines include:
April 15 – North Carolina & Ohio
April 29 – Kentucky
May 1 – California
May 16 – Utah
May 20 – Missouri
June 1 – South Carolina
June 24 – Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin
Late Summer 2016 – Campus Compact of the Mountain West (Colorado & Wyoming)
September 9 – Michigan
Contact your Campus Compact state office for more information.
It All Comes Full Circle
Many of you know that aside from being the co-founder of The Facing Project, I also serve as the Executive Director of Indiana Campus Compact. As a coalition of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the country, Campus Compact is committed to the public purposes of higher education and the development of all to ensure campuses are working with communities in a reciprocal way to solve some of the most pressing needs facing communities.
When I began my involvement with Campus Compact sixteen years ago, I jumped in feet first ready to make a difference and thought that difference was through ground-level volunteering. But through Campus Compact, I’ve learned there is a shift that needs to happen within structures if we want to see true sustainable change. Campuses must work with communities and not for, and when we developed The Facing Project model we kept that ethos at the forefront. Because of this, Kelsey and I couldn’t be any happier to partner with these state offices to bring the model of The Facing Project to so many of you.
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Is your state not one listed above? You can still start a Facing Project in your community. Learn more.
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Do you want to get folks talking in your community? Take part in the #iSeeStories Challenge.
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Make a statement by wearing Facing Project gear! For every shirt sold, $5.00 goes to support community storytelling projects.