The NOVA Award

What is the NOVA Award?
In the universe, a NOVA is a star that suddenly increases in brightness to several times its normal magnitude. The NOVA Award honors innovation in programs/services or innovations in business operations, within Boulder County's non-profit sector. The NOVA Awards were established by The Community Foundation in 1997.

The NOVA Award Winner for 2010 is SWAP (Student Worker Alliance Program)

The Student Worker Alliance Program (SWAP) is committed to cross-cultural engagement, mutual empowerment and respect, skills acquisition, and solidarity in addressing inequality. SWAP’s mission is to bring together systematically divided campus sectors, at CU, to share a common learning and cultural experience. This is accomplished by providing free and convenient English language classes to predominantly immigrant CU employees who hold underappreciated, yet indispensible, positions on campus.

SWAP provides free trainings to university student volunteers, preparing them to teach one-on-one or small group English classes. Each year over 100 CU students are matched with over 100 campus employees. Through the approval of campus supervisors, classes are held two hours every week during the workday to maximize accessibility for workers’ and students’ schedules. SWAP bridges the gap between cultures and ages and between local immigrant employees and students. The service workers are no longer an invisible group which holds the campus together, but are recognized as valued people, just like everyone else on campus.

“I’ve been working at the dorms at CU for 10 years, and I’ve noticed a big difference in the relationships between students and workers since SWAP started here. One example is that when the CU students leave at the end of the year their rooms aren’t nearly as messy, because they are now friends with and respect the people who have to clean up their messes.    - Alex Acosta, immigrant worker at CU

“SWAP has allowed me to establish a meaningful relationship with a woman from a different culture, who speaks a different language, from a different generation, and has had completely different life experiences than me. That is something that without SWAP, I might never have had the opportunity to experience. The SWAP model is something that needs to be available to every college student living in this diverse country.”   – Meredith Rogers, CU Student and SWAP volunteer