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 What is the Oakes CARA Program, and what do we do?

 

CARA stands for “Community-based Action Research and Advocacy.”

The CARA Program at Oakes College offers undergraduate students a variety of opportunities to engage with the communities and social justice issues that matter most to them, through experiential learning in fields like education, legal aid, and assisting organizations with outreach and community-development work through their courses.

Oakes CARA courses work to build skills and relationships on and off-campus from the time students first get to Santa Cruz.  Some of our courses are cross-listed with other departments, or may be used as electives to satisfy major credit.

The CARA Certificate.  We hope students will stay involved in community engagement work and develop enduring relationships with community organizations.  To support and honor that work, Oakes offers a certificate in Service Learning.

We are committed to developing partnerships, collaborative projects, and placements through respectful, ongoing dialogue, toward a more connected and inclusive community and region.  We prioritize projects that build community capacity for action, and that develop university-community engagement in a sustainable way.

See Directory of Community Partners & Resources for Advocacy

 

Programs

Oakes Community-Building Courses develop community and communication skills among students in supportive spaces for resilience in academics, life, and any creative endeavors.

Puentes Community Engagement Courses build outreach, documentation, and advocacy skills; grassroots ethics; knowledge of Santa Cruz; and useful training for community development work.  Promotores courses work on community-based projects like outreach, survey, know-your-rights; Puentes Legal courses support work at sites providing professional legal aid intake and counseling (LGST/Oakes 188A) and (LGST/Oakes 188B).

The Corre la Voz Program is offered year-round (F, W, S).  This creative, multi-modal teaching and mentoring program serves 4th and 5th graders from Spanish speaking homes, and builds a community of caring bilingual learners on and off campus.  Enrollment in Oakes 151A/B is through application.  Read more about the Corre la Voz Program.

Community Mapping (153) is offered in Winter.  Currently, Oakes 153 is part of the We Belong Collaboration for Community-Engaged Research and Immigrant Justice Project (2018 to the present). Read more about the We Belong Project.

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Learning Outcomes

In CARA courses and projects, students build communication and research skills, critical thinking, mutual support relationships, and confidence.  Our courses are interdisciplinary, and designed to be adapted to emergent issues and shifting partnerships in our community, but our principles stay the same. Following decolonizing pedagogies of the Global South and the Oakes tradition, our courses pursue critical, participatory “literacies” and “geographies” for justice.  Following our Program Learning Outcomes, each of our endeavors aims to develop:

    • situated, informed understandings of ourselves and others;
    • a sense of belonging and community;
    • a politics of solidarity toward common causes; and
    • methodologies for democratizing the production of knowledge–recognizing diverse cultures, languages, and perspectives across age span and educational backgrounds–to effectively represent ourselves and our communities.