As a second-year master of public health student at UGA, I explored new ways to apply my scientific background through avenues outside of the classroom and lab. Last fall, I participated in a Community Engagement course, which introduced the theory, methodology and ethics of university-community engagement and trained students in engaged teaching, research and public service.

During the course, I worked with UGA Coastal Resilience Specialist and public service faculty, Jill Gambill, to capture the impacts of the Green Infrastructure to Green Jobs Savannah Initiative. This program is a community-level, collaborative project that combines job training and landscape certification for low-income jobseekers through the creation of new urban tree nurseries for the city. That fall, the initiative provided a classroom and hands-on landscape training program for a cohort of 19 participants, or apprentices. As part of the training, apprentices cleaned up three vacant city lots and planted native tree nurseries while learning about different plant species, landscape design, irrigation systems and gaining professional development skills. The trees from these nurseries will eventually be transplanted around the city to help improve stormwater management and prevent erosion from stormwater runoff and flooding.

My goal was to measure the impact of the landscape apprenticeship program and curriculum. Specifically, I helped finalize and administer a survey aimed to gauge the impacts of the training program and to gather the apprentices’ feedback. To pilot the survey, I had the unique opportunity to interview some of the apprentices in person. Then, I followed up with the remaining apprentices and conducted additional surveys over the phone.

What really stuck with me was how passionate each apprentice was about the program and training. Interviews with several apprentices showed how they increased their interpersonal connections with employers, increased their job opportunities and even boosted their self-confidence. Many of the apprentices explained how they used the knowledge gained from the training program to build irrigation systems for their families and how they take pride in explaining to other community members about proper plant management and the benefits of improving green infrastructure.

After working with partners of the Savannah Initiative, I realized one of the most import elements of successful community engagement is collaboration. Through interviews with the participants and email chains with community partners, I witnessed for myself how this initiative cultivated successful partnerships, combining the strengths of multiple community organizations, businesses and institutions. I reached out to several of the partners to gather metrics we could use to measure community impact, such as total number of acres restored for the nurseries, the collective total hours the apprentices worked, the amount of funding leveraged through grants and community partners and the number of schools and students involved in the pot painting events for the trees. Even over email, it was clear these partners were eager to help contribute to our work. The apprentices also expressed how important these collaborations were for them, and how getting to work with actual community businesses and organizations gave them feelings of accomplishment, importance and that they were truly making a difference by addressing the identified community needs in the training program.

I believe that conservation should focus on the harmonization of healthy interactions between humans and the environment, and that this effort requires an integrated approach between all members of society. By participating in the evaluation process, I learned how community engagement can benefit all those involved in different yet meaningful ways. I have seen how promoting a culture of participation between individuals, partnerships and institutions strengthens the resilience of a community engagement project and facilitates its beneficial long-term impacts.