Connecting college students with community resources
This week I am pitching a unique project to computer science students at the University of Montana on behalf of the ASUM Renter Center.
Although the ASUM Renter Center already has web apps that help students find rentals and roommates and review landlords, this is our first tech project to help address basic needs insecurity among UM students.
Food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness are getting more attention in Missoula and around the country. Our best data on this issue comes from the #RealCollege survey, which showed that a significant number of students at the University of Montana struggle to meet basic needs:
- 42% of respondents were food insecure in the prior 30 days
- 55% of respondents were housing insecure in the previous year
- 28% of respondents were homeless in the previous year
Making matters worse, the report goes on to say that only 14% of food insecure students utilize SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) and only 4% of homeless students utilize housing benefits.
Part of the reason for gulf between the need for and the use of services may be that students do not know what resources are available or believe they would not qualify to use them. Kat at the UM Food Pantry has done a great job educating students about SNAP, but there is more to do, especially for students experiencing homelessness. For that reason, the ASUM Renter Center is recruiting students to create a community resource database.
Some readers might respond that Missoula nonprofits are already prolific creators of these sorts of lists and directories. They are correct; in fact, large portion of my career has been dedicated to creating, updating, and distributing those documents.
That work has left me with a keen sense that there is a better way. For that reason, I am recruiting UM students to deploy a database using the Open Referral Human Services Data Specification. Watch the video below for more information on Open Referral.
If everything works out, at the end of this academic year, we will have a database that students can easily navigate, and with a little luck, we can start stitch together many disparate efforts around Missoula.
For the technologically inclined can follow our project on the ASUM Renter Center’s GitHub page.
Originally published at http://jordanjlyons.wordpress.com on August 29, 2019.
