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Unit 3: Influences on Business – Thematic Project

Complete all assigned reading before attempting the assignment. Your answers must be based on the reading. Include both the questions and answers, type all answers in complete sentences, and number your work. Submit in the text box below or submit as a word or PDF document.

Community Outreach and Service Learning

Community outreach and service learning are smart business practices. Community outreach is good public relations. It helps keep the community strong and healthy, brings in new customers to a business, and helps mentor young people through service learning.

Thematic Project Assignment

In this project you will research and then write a news story, with pictures, about a business that is working on a community project. Include information about student volunteers for the project and how they acquire knowledge while working in service to the community.

Step 1: Brainstorm Skills You Need to Complete this Activity

Your success in researching and writing a news feature story will depend on your skills. Preview the activity. Then brainstorm a list of the skills you will need to use to complete the activity and describe how you will use them. Skills you might use include:

• Academic Skills reading, writing, math, and science skills
• Basic Skills speaking, listening, thinking, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills
• Technology Skills word processing, keyboarding, database, spreadsheet

Skills Preview: Click here to view a graphic organizer you can use to brainstorm the skills you will use to complete the project.

Step 2: Choose a Business and a Career That Interest You

Use your local newspaper, business magazines, and the Internet to fi nd news stories about businesses that interest you that are helping communities. Make sure they offer a career in which you are interested and are using student volunteers with the project.

Step 3: Build Background Knowledge

Preview the stories and look for the who, what, when, where, and why in each story.

Steps 4 to 6

Step 4: Connect with Your Community

Interview a local business owner about the company’s involvement in community proj- ects. Find out how the owner benefi ted. Ask if he or she had student volunteers and how the volunteers benefited.

Step 5: Research Business Trends

Use library or Internet resources to research community outreach. Use the checklist as a guide to your research. Keep records of your sources of information.

Step 6: Develop a Report

Use word processing to write a 350- to 400-word newspaper feature story, with photos. Use your imagination to create the “facts” for your story. Stage your friends for the photos. Include all the information described in this checklist.

News Feature

✔ Use the stories you have already read as models for your story.

✔ Write a draft of your story. Include the who, what, when, where, why, and how.

• Who: Who is the story about? What is the name of the business? Who are the student volunteers? Who had the idea?
• What: What is the community project? What is the company philosophy about community outreach?
• When: When did the business and students get together to tackle the project? When did they first meet? How did the business find student volunteers?
• Where: Where did the project take place? Why: Why did the business decide to take on this community project?
• How: How did the company benefit? How did the student volunteers benefit?

✔ Stage your friends for the photos. Have a few friends dress in clothing appropriate for your story and do things that illustrate the story. For example, if your story is about cleaning up a park, have your friends wear outdoor clothing and plant flowers or rake leaves.

Self Connections

✔ Describe the results of your research with a family member or other adult.
✔ Describe how the entrepreneur you interviewed influenced the business and career in which you are interested.
✔ Explain what the investigation and its results mean to you.