Bringing Together the Duke Community for Service and Social Action Inclusion, representation, and transparency are crucial principles of meaningful engagement.
dPS strives to support a student body that is committed to ethical service, meaningful engagement, and social justice. dPS seeks to connect student-run service organizations with on- and off-campus resources, community organizations, and the general student body. Further, dPS seeks to be the institutional home of civic engagement, activism, advocacy, and community-based experiential education for
Duke undergraduates. dPS-affiliated groups are expected to work in accordance with the values stated within our mission statement. We define these as follows:
Ethical service entails a respect for diversity, an emphasis on reflection, evaluation, and humility, the practice of reciprocity, and a substantive understanding of structural forces that ask why social problems both exist and persist. Meaningful engagement includes respect for community needs and service of those needs in a manner that is sustainable. A commitment to social justice means fierce advocacy for equal opportunity, safety, and well-being, of all members of society, and especially those communities marginalized by race, gender, sexual orientation and presentation, geography, socio-economic status, ability, or religion. We seek to accomplish this mission by organizing, overseeing, and supporting all Duke University student service organizations, forming partnerships with Duke Academic and University Departments, and by forming partnerships within the Durham and larger community.
