My PR Portfolio class is essentially a capstone class for all of the senior Public Communication majors at my school. We get to work with a real client and gain real experience in addition to what everyone's gained at their internships and jobs.
My class is working with
America's Promise Alliance, which is focused on ending the high school dropout crisis. Throughout the country- in cities especially, there are schools referred to as "dropout factories" which have very, very low graduation rates. Over 300 nonprofit organizations are members of America's Promise Alliance, all working towards the common goal of creating educational environments and experiences more conducive to graduation.
The class is divided into groups, and each group is developing community toolkits for two of the Alliance's twelve target cities. My group was assigned Detroit and New Orleans, both of which face incredible circumstances that mean that a high school student is more likely to dropout than receive a diploma.
Recently, I designed and developed city fact sheets for each city based on statistics from 2008 and 2009. What my group found was arresting, and I thought they would be valuable to share. Ideally, this is the sort of thing that could be shared with members of the media if they are interested in a story related to America's Promise. I really enjoyed making them because I hadn't worked on a design project since last semester! Please check them out and let me know what you think! (Click for a larger version!)
