Community Leadership Project- Service Hours Reflection Paper

Your Name: Jade K. Clark

Name of the Community Agency and its mission: Act Early Ohio

Description of your role at the agency: Served as a representative at local

symposiums and promoted the initiative on Pinterest

Learn the Signs, Act Early is an initiative started by the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) to make parents, caregivers, and educators of children
birth to five years old more aware of the developmental milestones their children should
be reaching. Act Early is all about spreading awareness of what typical fine motor, gross
motor, communication, and play development looks like and what the next steps should
be when a child is not reaching those milestones. I believe this initiative has a strong
impact on the community because, in the age of Google when false information is all
over the internet, Act Early provides accurate information on development, through a
wide range of free resources and materials. I contributed to this impact by serving as an
Act Early “Mini Ambasador” or liaison between the CDC and the community. This role
allowed me to hand out books, informational booklets, and brochures full of information
on early childhood development. Also with my background in speech-language
pathology, I had the opportunity to explain receptive, expressive, and pragmatic
language skills, as well as play skills, to inquiring parents. In my role I also posted
information about development to the Act Early Ohio Pinterest page.

This experience has deepened my knowledge of early childhood development

and the importance of early intervention. Throughout school, I have had courses on
pediatric communication development, but I never had the milestones etched in memory
because I wasn’t putting them into practice. Being an Act Early Mini Ambassador gave
me the opportunity to look through the informational materials and explain the
milestones to parents which has made them easier to remember. Parents will always
have questions on their child’s development and as a future SLP that is something that I
will be able to explain to them.

While Act Early does a great job of connecting to members of the community,
there is always room for improvement. I think that it would be beneficial for Act Early to
create videos or tutorials on things parent can do at home to aid in early development.
The initiative does a great job at giving out information, but could do a better job at
providing tools. These tutorials could include various play activities to engage a child in
and ways to enhance that play to make it more educational or therapeutic, and also
ways to make book reading more interactive aiding in early literacy skills.
 Although my time as an Act Early Mini Ambassador has come to an end, I will
definitely still visit their website and promote their initiative to members of the
community. I am appreciative of this experience because, as a new clinician, I now have
a reputable agency to refer parents to whenever they have questions or concerns about
their child’s development. It will also be a great resource for my own reference
whenever I’m working with a child and unsure of what skills they should have acquired
based on their developmental age. I also find the free resources and materials to be a
great help so I will most likely order them from the website and keep them on hand for
my own use and to hand out to the parents, teachers, and caregivers of my clients.

This year, the connection between the Cincinnati LEND program and Act Early
has been a strong one. With Steph serving as the Act Early Ambassador for the state of
Ohio it has been very easy to get LEND trainees involved. Even after Steph’s term
ended we were still able to volunteer and provide resources to families and educators.
Because the work we do in the LEND program aligns so well with what Act Early is
promoting I believe that this collaboration is an important one. It not only spreads
awareness about development, but also affords LEND trainees the opportunity to
become more well versed on milestones and use what we have learne to explain
development to community members. I hope that in the future, LEND students are still
able to participate on this initiative and educate themselves and others on this important
topic.

Please answer the following questions:

1. How would you describe the impact the agency has on the community, participants and their
families and how did you contribute to this?
2. What impact has this experience had on you and how will it affect your work in your discipline?
3. Are there ways in which you think the agency could have more of a positive impact? Ways it
could better meet its mission?
4. Do you see any way that you could continue to support this agency now that you have
completed your service hours?
5. What could be done in the future to strengthen collaboration between the LEND program and
the community agency?
6. What goals did you include on your ILP related to this project? Assess how well you met these
goals and if you have future goals you will set for yourself as a result of participating with this
agency.
7. Please provide me with any other feedback on this project- anything you liked/disliked? Should
we continue to partner with this agency? Ways to improve the project, etc etc etc

This paper should be 2-3 pages in length or approximately 1200-1500 words.