Dartmouth Center for Social Impact

09/19/2025

Happy FDOC 📝⁠
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Our campus community was feeling all the feels as classes started earlier this week, but mostly they're feeling ready to make a difference! ⁠
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Here's your reminder that even the small things make a big impact! And to call home--they miss you! Wishing everyone a great fall term!

09/18/2025

We love supporting meaningful, local community engagement. Go Catherine!

🌟 We’re excited to welcome Catherine Harnois to Maynard House! 🌟

Catherine joins us through Dartmouth College’s Center for Social Impact (DCSI) program, which connects students with organizations making a difference in the community.

During her time with us, Catherine will be supporting communications, data analysis, and guest engagement projects—all to help us better serve the families who rely on Maynard House during their medical treatment.

Please join us in giving Catherine a warm welcome to the team! 💙 We are so grateful for her energy, insight, and commitment to service.

08/18/2025

Board games for the common good.

Students in Professor Flanagan's Game Design Studio (one of our Social Impact Practicums) teamed up with Windham Aging this term. During the course, students designed and prototyped board games on the topic of aging. Their games created opportunities for intergenerational connections, conversations, and storytelling.

08/15/2025

Vismaya, one of our '82 Upper Valley Community Impact Fellows, is working with the Public Health Council (PHC) to enhance rural health infrastructure. Through her engagement with PHC, Vismaya is contributing to systems-level improvement that will benefit the Upper Valley.

As an '82 Fellow, Vismaya has worked with the PHC for multiple terms, fostering deep and meaningful relationships with the community. With supervision and mentorship from Alice Ely, Executive Director, this extended opportunity has allowed for rich learning, project development, and implementation.

A primary focus of Vismaya's fellowship has been supporting the PHC's efforts to strengthen municipal engagement. She started by meeting with Town Health Officers from seven different towns to better understand the challenges and gaps they face in delivering essential public health functions. Sometimes these interviews included another DCSI intern, Thomas! Using the insights from these meetings, she created and distributed a survey to all 34 towns in the Upper Valley. This survey helped identify areas in which PHC can support, advocate, and collaborate more effectively. This work is part of PHC's broader effort to ensure that local municipalities have the resources, partnerships, and planning support needed to protect and promote town-level public health initiatives.

07/25/2025

Happy National Intern Day! 💼⁠
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A huge shout-out to all our interns who are doing important work, making a difference, and growing as professionals along the way. We can't wait to see what they'll do next.

07/21/2025

Our program, Growing Change, partners Dartmouth students with a passion for the environment with local preschoolers through second-graders for a transformative experience for everyone!

Dartmouth students spend time preparing and teaching lessons about the local food, ecology, and environmental issues. The program started in 2012 and has been going strong since!

07/10/2025

Shouting out our Philly interns who have settled into their roles and their city! ⁠
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The cohort took a tour of Philadelphia that focused on commonly overlooked perspectives around the Revolutionary War and settler-colonial experiences. Their tour guide Shawn showed them historic areas like the President's House site, the Gayborhood, and the old Pennsylvania Hospital while telling them the stories of women who have been left out of most tours and history books. ⁠
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We think they're making great strides in unpacking the intersectionality of poverty and other social issues!

07/08/2025

It was a jam-packed SEAD summer for our scholars last week! They attended classes focused on writing their college essays, experienced a tour and a watercolor class at AVA Art Gallery, completed an escape room at the Hood Museum, harvested scallions at Dartmouth's organic garden, created projects in the Maker Space, wrote and produced mini-films in the Jones Media Center, and more. A HUGE thank you to the Dartmouth students, faculty, staff, and community partners who gave their time and knowledge to make the program a success! 🌱

05/12/2025

Foundations brought the sunshine through their smiles last week! Students continued to work on their projects, attending to feedback they received from Tuck students the week before.

Students also continued to connect and build teamwork skills by reviewing projects together 🔄💪🏾

Our Foundations students have been so hard at work— we are so excited to see what these final projects on social innovation and action will look like! 😆

01/21/2025

This MLK Day, we wanted to honor the good work that Dr. King believed in and fought for by having you meet Dr. David Woody, Class of '77! ⁠
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President and CEO of The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center in Dallas, TX, Dr. Woody works to empower the community around him by calling for legislative change and advocating for the reclamation of dignity on behalf of those experiencing homelessness. ⁠
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Homelessness, like many other issues, continues to disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities, and it's important that we spend time understanding why (and how we can thoughtfully address this issue - hint, that requires also understanding the broader systems of disenfranchisement that impact these communities). ⁠
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Dr. Woody stars in the most recent episode of our podcast, All the Difference! Take a deeper dive into Dr. Woody's journey and one of the most pressing issues in our country—homelessness. ⁠
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We are so proud of Dartmouth alumni who courageously lead careers in service, impact, and justice and who continue to spread the light and dreams of the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.