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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nStudents from Morgan Kinney\u2019s First-Year Seminar, \u201cThe Civic Self: Exploring Place and Purpose in Community,\u201d and Emily Kane\u2019s 100-level Sociology course, \u201cContemporary Social Problems,\u201d are putting theory into practice each week this semester at one of several different community sites. Three of those students \u2013 first-years Sam Sidoti, Maeve Mufson, and Caitlin Quinn \u2013 spend most Saturday mornings at the Drop-in Center in Auburn<\/a>, where they are strengthening a budding partnership between Bates and the Drop-in Center. Professor Kane shares: \u201cWhen Morgan and I met with folks at the Drop-In Center late this summer to consider possible connections for my course on Contemporary Social Problems, it was clear that their great work would connect really well with this course, in which the many social problems we study include housing, food security, poverty, health equity, and much more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n The Drop-in Center provides wrap-around services for people experiencing homelessness in the LA community. Currently located on Pleasant Street in Auburn at the Unitarian Universalist Church, the Center was developed in a grass-roots manner by community members who observed a growing need for food, shelter, and connection to resources for individuals experiencing homelessness in their community. Opening their doors for the first time in February 2022, the Drop-in Center has since become an independent 501(c)(3) with big plans. As Susan Martin, a volunteer staff member who helps run the center and has helped forge the Bates relationship explains: \u201cAs our numbers have grown over the past three years, [our location] has become unsustainable. We are very excited to have been offered the opportunity by the City of Auburn to move to 121 Mill St. at the end of this year. This move will not only offer us more general space but will also provide us with a commercial kitchen, additional bathrooms and showers, and a larger store area. The City of Auburn will also have many of its support services relocated to that building and have available office space for other local resources. This will be a huge help to our guests.\u201d The students who have seen the work of the Drop-in Center first hand are thrilled to see their services being expanded. Reflecting on the diligence and commitment of the staff and volunteers at the Drop-In Center, Sam Sidoti, a first-year student from New Hampshire, noted: \u201cThey put things aside for visitors when they remember they said they needed it; they make sure they get what they need (food, clothes, shower, etc.); and they are always on the lookout for more innovative ways to care for people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Drop-in Center\u2019s tagline \u2013 \u201cCome as you are\u201d \u2013 authentically represents their approach to engaging both the guests who use their services and the volunteers who support their mission with day-to-day jobs like cooking, organizing the \u201cfree store,\u201d and, perhaps most importantly, being in conversation and solidarity with guests who want to \u201crest, rejuvenate, and replenish.\u201d According to regular reflections completed by students in both the CEL courses that are partnering with the Center, students have been blown away by the commitment that the staff and regular volunteers have to the holistic experience of guests and<\/em> volunteers at the Center. During the planning stages of the partnership, Professors Kane and Kinney remarked on the keen interest Susan Martin and Kitsie Claxton of the Drop-in Center showed in Bates students\u2019 learning. Each student has cited important moments of learning, including having societally-engrained stigmas about homelessness challenged and their perspectives transformed through regular engagement with the guests at the Center. <\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n