Last year, the city of Providence spent thousands of dollars to hire a marketing firm to create a logo and a slogan for the city. With the help of Cranston students, Mayor Allan Fung decided he’d get the job done for free.

“The mayor and his staff were quite impressed with the academic ability and creativity of the kids, and as a result he and his staff sat with us during the months of October and November to come up with a marketing project that would benefit the city of Cranston,” explained School Committee Chairman Michael Traficante, who sits on the Board of Directors for the New England Laborers’/Cranston Public Schools Construction Career Academy.

Fung visited the school on Project Day last year, which is what prompted him to tap into the students this time around.

“I am truly excited by the marketing project with the NEL/CPS students,” Fung said. “It is an innovative approach to developing a brand for our city by utilizing the fine talent that we have at the Laborers’ Academy.”

Each year, students at NEL/CPS are assigned a large Project Based Learning project. This type of instruction takes a topic and integrates it into all subject areas. At NEL/CPS, the curriculum also includes a trip related to the theme.

Last year’s project included a trip to Sandusky, Ohio to see the only confederate cemetery in the north, which was the students’ focus. With the cemetery located on Johnson’s Island, students were asked to create better means of access in order to increase travel and tourism to the area.

They also had to look at the surrounding area and create other tourist attractions and accommodations. The project required managing the area, creating budgets, hiring a fictitious staff and ultimately assessing the success of their creations. The final presentation had to include a model of the area as well as written documentation to go along with it.

These products are displayed on Project Day for faculty and staff, as well as city dignitaries.

The partnership between the city and the students will be a “green project,” using all recycled materials and will be built to scale. The project is called Building on an American Dream: A Multicultural Approach. The focus is the city of Cranston, according to Traficante and Dr. Michael Silvia, executive director of the school.

“We consider ourselves to be an innovative school, and it’s wonderful to be recognized by the mayor and his staff,” Traficante said. “This project emphasizes the children and their innovative and technical abilities, all at no cost to the city.”

According to Silvia, like the Providence campaign, this year’s project requires the students to develop a slogan and a logo, as well as a marketing plan to be used in the communities within Cranston. Students will research the various pockets of populations within the city, determining the demographics in each area and researching the history of the communities, dating as far back as colonial times.

To supplement the classroom work, students will travel to Colonial Williamsburg in April 2010 to study colonial history and how it relates to the state of Rhode Island. Dr. Silvia noted that the Historic March of Rochambeau started in Providence and continued through Cranston, on the way to Virginia in 1781.

In the past, the project has been broken down into grade levels. This year, it will be a school-wide endeavor with students divided into teams. An award will be given to the team that develops the best slogan and logo for the city of Cranston, as chosen by Mayor Fung.

“Other communities have paid thousands of dollars for this type of marketing, but I believe that we have the talent right here to do this work,” the mayor said. “I plan on using the winning design throughout the city in various buildings and pamphlet material.”

Dr. Silvia said he too is excited to see the outcome of the students’ work, noting that this type of a project lets the students at NEL/CPS work in their own environment.

“This puts our students in their comfort zone. This project caters to their abilities and how they learn,” he said. “They’re hands-on learners.”

The students are currently in the research phase of the project and will reveal the final products on Project Day, which is scheduled for May 20, 2010.