At Batten Hour this week, three groups of students gave presentations about their work over the past academic year with nonprofit organizations in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area. The initiative is the focus of the Formative Change Group (FCG), a pro-bono, student-led consulting club, which has been partnering with area nonprofits since 2012.
The idea is to enable Batten students to apply their leadership, policy, and analytical skills to real-world challenges while making a difference in the local community.
While the students learned many things from their experience, one common lesson emerged during the event: the importance of hearing from a variety of people.
“For me it’s really sitting down before you are starting to work on these deliverables and thinking about who you need to talk to … just the importance of meeting with stakeholders,” said Abby Anger.
“You can just schedule a meeting with anybody, at any time, for any reason. I think I’m going to remember that in the future,” said Nina Kudlak.
“There is such a wealth of experience among professional adults out there that I really did not conceive of as an undergraduate,” said Nathaniel Salomon.
Project 1
Kudlak and Samir Godambe presented their project with the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (ACHS) involving Pen Park, where dozens of unmarked graves of enslaved people were discovered in the early 2000s. The students (including Vivian Phan, who was unable to come to the presentation) designed a coalition building effort among the ACHS, the city and the Parks and Recreation Department with the aim of protecting the site and raising public awareness.
They also reached out to local descendants of the enslaved people. “We realized advocacy should not be an imposition, and that’s kind of what we felt like was happening when we were reaching out, being told “we just have too much to do in our own lives to deal with this initiative right now,” Kudlak said. “And so this informed our problem statement.”
The group offered several recommendations including bringing on an archeological intern from UVA, improving signage and boundary markers, consulting with the city about allocating more resources, and engaging the descendant community in a low-barrier manner to ensure their input is heard.
Project 2
Also working with the ACHS, Salomon, Reid Jacobson, and Helen Goodyear (who was not at the presentation) tackled the organization’s “Cvillepedia” website. The FCG had done a report on the site three years ago, and while some progress was made as a result, this year’s consulting group found ways to make it a better functioning and more useful resource for more people.
Their three-part roadmap to improving the site included: establishing a strategic direction and better communication and community management; reducing, reorganizing, and streamlining the content for a better user experience; and increasing public outreach and promotion through emails and QR codes.
Project 3
Four students worked with local nonprofit Her Sports to help design a plan for the group to meet its near- and long-term goals. Since 2020, Her Sports has promoted health and wellness in middle-school girls by providing programming and opportunities to play sports.
Batten students Melat Asmerom and Anger (Seamus Finnegan and Seonbin Song were unable to attend) delved into the financial and programmatic background of the organization. Based on their analysis, they devised several deliverables, including marketing material for Her Sports’ 5-year anniversary this June, a list of potential donors, recommendations for potential grant applications, and recommendations for UVA partnerships to further the group’s mission.
“I think under-resourced organizations’ needs are going to fluctuate as you’re working with them,” Anger said. “Things will come up that they want you to prioritize, like the 5th year anniversary gala wasn’t really on our radar until we started having conversations and realized that’s what their need was. So I think just being flexible and open to helping organizations as different needs come up.”
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