• Provide direct service to the community or advocate for justice;
• Learn about the issues and people that are involved;
• Develop their skills as leaders; and
• Learn and grow through the experience and reflection.

Service-learning is a field of practice that brings expertise, skills, and processes that complement and strengthen both interfaith engagement and asset building—the other two approaches that underlie interfaith service-learning.

Benefits of High-Quality Service-Learning

• Engages young people in meeting human needs, strengthening communities, and working for justice.
• Develops problem-solving skills, deepens values, and strengthens pro-social commitments.
• Promotes social, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual growth.
• Enhances understanding and respect across religious, socioeconomic, cultural, and other areas of diversity.
• Builds Developmental Assets, which provide the foundation for healthy development.
• Improves school performance, grades, and learning.
• Reduces the likelihood that young people will engage in high-risk behaviors.
• Increases the likelihood that young people will be civically engaged throughout their lives. 

What Makes Service-Learning Work?

The field of service-learning has identified a number of quality standards for effective service-learning. Here are some key elements:

• Young people have active and meaningful leadership roles throughout the process.
• Clear and intentional learning and development goals guide the whole process.
• Young people are engaged in service-learning across time, including multiple sessions that involve investigation, planning, action, reflection, and demonstration/celebration.
• The projects meet real community needs. This requires that they be designed with the community and address some part of complex problems in complex settings.

How Service-Learning Enriches Interfaith Engagement

Service-learning offers the following to interfaith engagement:

• A clear focus on setting goals for growth and learning. These can include goals related to interfaith engagement and personal growth.
• A planning process that helps young people develop the skills they need for interfaith encounters.
• Ongoing opportunities for reflection, including contextualizing the service and underlying issues within their own (and others') faith traditions and narratives.
• A process and practices that help to ensure that the service provided is meaningful to both those offering and those receiving the service.

How Service-Learning Enriches Asset Building

Service-learning is a powerful strategy for building assets. In fact, longitudinal research has found that middle school students who reported serving at least one hour per average week were 3.6 times more likely than nonvolunteers to have high asset levels (31–40 assets) three years later. Service-learning contributes to asset building by. . .

• Empowering young people with meaningful roles as leaders and contributors to their communities.
• Developing social competencies that they need in today's world.
• Providing concrete activities that build many assets and connect young people to caring peers and adults.
• For more on the role of service-learning in asset building, see the article,  "Service to Others: A 'Gateway' Asset to School Success and Healthy Development."

Putting Interfaith Service-Learning into Practice

Service-learning has many elements, and you don't have to understand them all before you begin. Just as young people learn by doing (a hallmark of service-learning), you can learn about service-learning by trying it out.

Go to the getting started section of this tool kit.