Students in Writing 3015 Learn About Grant Writing through Community Engaged Learning

Students in Pamela Balluck’s Writing 3015 (Professional Writing) had a unique final assignment this semester that paid off major dividends for their nonprofit community partner, the Rape Recover Center (RRC). With the help of Balluck’s class, the RRC will receive a $2,000 grant from the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation.

“It certainly is great to hear that our work paid off and made a real impact for the Rape Recovery Center,” said Steven Havlik, a student in the class.

Balluck, Associate Instructor of Writing & Rhetoric Studies, asked her students to research the RRC in order to help them write a grant application. “From the community engaged learning team work, students get a taste of operating in potential real-life situations in which they must appeal to a very particular audience in professional writing that reads persuasively as ‘one voice,’” said Balluck. “When they write grant-proposal materials on the nonprofit partner’s behalf, they are following actual application instructions that I assign from a foundation our community partner plans to apply for a grant from in future.”

Mara Haight, Executive Director of the RRC, is thrilled with the incredible payoff the RRC will receive from working with the U’s excellent Writing & Rhetoric Studies Department.  “These students made funding possible to pay for 48 hours of hospital advocacy for 8 survivors of sexual trauma. What an incredible thing - because of the passion, dedication, and skill of these students, eight survivors had crisis support and resources during the process of rape kit collection,” said Mara Haight.

The RRC was founded in 1975, and is the only organization of its kind in the Salt Lake area. The organization works with victims through advocacy, crisis intervention, and therapy services. When a victim of sexual trauma present him or herself to the hospital, the RRC’s 24-hour Hospital Response Team provides a certified volunteer to act as an on-site mediator between the victim and medical staff, law enforcement, and any of the victim’s family or friends who may be present at the hospital.

“I hope these students recognize the human impact of their work, because their contributions made a very real impact on the lives of these survivors served,” Haight said. “On behalf of all of us at the Rape Recovery Center, thank you!”