Frances Shani Parker Receives Service-Learning Trailblazer Award

Congratulations to Frances Shani Parker, who was honored with the 2007 Service-Learning Trailblazer Award. The National Service-Learning Partnership gives the award annually to leaders who inspire others to deepen their service-learning practice.

The award was presented by NYLC Vice President Wokie Weah, on August 4, 2007, at The Fourth Annual Service-Learning Institute. Appropriately, the event was held at Wayne State University in Detroit, the city where Parker served as a public school administrator for 18 years.

Weah described Parker as a "pioneering leader of service-learning in urban settings," and praised "her continued work to get the world to view young people and elders as valuable and powerful resources for positive community change."

Parker has been instrumental in spreading the philosophy and practice of service-learning — in Detroit and across the country. She broke new ground in the early 1990s, engaging teachers and students at Detroit’s Dewey Center for Urban Education in documenting the impact of service-learning on academic achievement through action research. She shared strategies and findings from that experience in an address at The First Annual Urban Service-Learning Institute in 2004.

Parker is a writer, educational consultant, hospice volunteer, and NYLC senior fellow. She recently published Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes.