Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
Hello! My name is Julia Espero, I’m a rising senior, and I’m working at the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) in Brooklyn, New York. Let me give you a quick run down of what I've been up to during the past four weeks! The Projects I’m Working on at CUP CUP is a non-profit organization that uses collaborations with community partners and students to create well designed tools for education on urban life in New York City. This summer, I’ll be doing two main projects: collecting data on the effectiveness of CUP’s Community Education program and assisting an Urban Investigation in partnership with youth at the Red Hook Community Justice Center. The Red Hook Community Justice Center (RHCJC) is also a cool non-profit part of the Center for Court Innovation, which focuses on reforming the justice system to be more humane and effective. I took a tour with our staff member, Jenn Williams, and Teaching Artist, Nupur Mathers, and it was a refreshing and enriching experience. RHCJC takes non-conventional approaches to the youth they work with by providing rehabilitation and requiring that youth give back to their communities. I felt a lot of love in this building and I’m excited to return and work with Nupur and students to collaborate on our Urban Investigation. “What’s an urban investigation?” Great question. It’s one of CUP’s youth education projects! It’s basically a method of researching a question about the city and using multi-media art to create a useful project that becomes a tool for educating others about what they learned. Click here for free PDFs, videos, and copies for sale of previous Urban Investigations. At the end of the project, youth get published and paid for their time collaborating with CUP and most often leave with a new sense of curiosity to continue investigating the ways the city works, proactively shaping it, and encouraging others to do the same. The personal growth I’ve experienced This is my second summer working at a non-profit organization in New York. Already, I’ve learned that there is no single non-profit experience. The past three weeks I’ve been in New York has helped me reflect on my experiences and questions about the future. I often ask myself: do I realistically like the idea of living in New York right after school? Can I live the life of a 9-5PM office job? And if I must, under what kind of circumstances? Overall, I really love what I’m doing this summer and the people and interactions I’m being exposed to. If I can quickly go through three adjectives that I’m feeling toward my current internship experience at CUP, they’re: inspired, heart-warmed, and also challenged by the opportunities I’m getting in this work environment and what I want to do. I like being exposed to designers, teachers, and advocates - and people who do all three. I’ve also appreciated how this internship has given me the opportunity to go to a variety of Boroughs - from the Bronx, to enclaves of Brooklyn - and engage with students and community advocates about the projects and learning materials they’ve created with CUP. The joys of explaining Urban Studies to strangers On another note, meeting people in the city and explaining my areas of interests has been a learning experience as well. One of the things that’s really cool - but also hard - about being an urban studies major is explaining it to people who have no experience with what I study and what that’s like in the context of Stanford. To me, my educational experience has been dynamic - something that has prepared me to work in a variety of fields, to create, and innovate. But because I often talk about my work in sociology & research and less on the design and innovating aspects I am more interested in, people can hear that I instead do “social work.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with social work, but that’s just not what I do or what I want to do. I love urban studies, and I don’t think this is an issue with the major, but rather an issue with my personal branding of it. Maybe I just made you cringe but this is a real thing. Re-framing experiences to reach new goals I’m also learning to not confuse other people’s misunderstanding for my own. No matter which way I explain who I am and what I do, some people just won’t get it and that’s fine. There are a lot of other people who do and others who will as well, and there are small ways I can manage people’s perceptions. What I’ve learned from this is that I need to frame my experiences in ways that don’t just reflect where I’ve been, but where I want to go. This has been a powerful realization for me, because it’s not just applicable to writing resumes, but also relevant when I’m talking to random people I meet on the street, or simply trying to live a positive life while reaching goals I’ve set out for myself. I fundamentally believe that people want to help each other succeed, they just need to hear the ways in which they can - and the only way to do that is to grab a handle of my vision and tell the story I want to happen even if it isn’t quite here yet. So for now, I’m going to take all these thoughts/lessons and tuck them away while I continue my internship and learning at CUP. Until next time - I can’t wait to share my projects with the wider urban studies community. Stay tuned for that! Julia Espero is a senior in the Urban Studies program at Stanford. Her academic interests include studying the lives of people living in cities, and the ways in which they can be enriched through physical and conceptual changes in our architectural environment and social interactions. Julia is also a writer and a visual artist, her work explores themes of identity, expression, and femininity. You can read more of her other thoughts at juleswritesthings.wordpress.com. Read about her first summer (2015) as an Urban Studies Fellow here: The Creative Class and Displacement in NYC Thinking about Art and Inequality at the New Whitney Donate to CUP by clicking here! Buy our projects and increase your knowledge by clicking here!
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Hello from Los Angeles! My name is Olivia Fritz, and I am a rising senior majoring in international relations and minoring in creative writing. This summer, I am interning at the LA branch of Year Up, a national nonprofit dedicated to providing low-income 18-to-24-year-olds in urban areas with job training, one-on-one mentorship, and internships. The organization focuses on closing the “opportunity divide” between qualified candidates and skilled positions in the American job market. For the first six months of its yearlong program, Year Up helps students from underserved communities receive the tools and training they need to succeed in the modern workforce through college-level courses in business and IT as well as professional development sessions for topics like time management and email etiquette. Afterward, the organization sets the students up in six-month internships at major companies so that they can obtain professional experience before pursuing full-time careers.
Two summers ago in my hometown of Chicago, I interned at another nonprofit related to education policy and professional development for young adults in urban areas. By the time I complete my current internship at Year Up Los Angeles, I hope to have a better understanding of how the issues urban youth face vary throughout the country. I also hope to assess how different styles of nonprofit management succeed in and/or struggle with achieving measurable goals for organizations. Though my international relations major and creative writing minor may not seem very relevant to Year Up’s day-to-day work, they actually apply to many of the projects I will be working on this summer. The CSRE and public policy courses I have taken for my secondary concentration in IR (social development and human wellbeing) have helped prepare me to carefully reflect on how I can achieve the greatest impact in my service to the organization. At the same time, I will have the opportunity to exercise my creative writing skills in developing promotional materials to reach out to prospective program participants. Year Up Los Angeles (or “YULA” as we call it around the office) is the newest branch of the organization—in fact, it will celebrate its one-year anniversary this August! YULA partners with and operates out of West Los Angeles College, a community college in Culver City, but it attracts students from all over the greater LA area. Right now at YULA, we are preparing the second-ever class of students to transition into their internships in mid-August while reviewing applications for the third class to enter the program around the same time. I just wrapped up my first week working with the admissions team to interview prospective students, review their applications, and facilitate outreach events. Looking back on all the meetings and projects over the past few days, I am only now realizing what a whirlwind it has been! My first day of work began with the “Monday Morning Kickoff,” a time when staff and students come together to discuss their goals and plans for the week. The theme for this week was adapting to change, something I definitely kept in mind as I learned more about my role in the organization. With orientation for the incoming class fast approaching, everyone on the admissions team has been hard at work holding info sessions and following up with interested candidates to schedule interviews and support plan meetings. I spent much of my first day shadowing my supervisor and the other admissions staff as they conducted interviews and discussed which applicants would move on to the next stage of the admissions process. Over the next few days, I conducted my first interview with a prospective student, advised dozens of prospective students on how to proceed with their applications, and drafted a report about an applicant that I will use next week in a discussion forum to recommend that YULA accept him into the new class. The best part of my summer experience so far has been getting to know the YULA staff. Because it is such a new branch, many YULA staff members (including the entire admissions department!) have been here six months or less. While this can be challenging when it comes to referencing events that took place or data the organization collected before we arrived, the presence of so many new faces in the organization has opened it up to a wide range of diverse opinions. This fosters effective conversation on new methods YULA can test to allow each of its departments to cater more closely to students’ needs. Aside from this multiplicity of perspectives, I am constantly inspired by the dedication each staff member demonstrates toward the program’s participants. Whether it is offering constructive feedback on a student’s performance in classes or simply engaging the student in casual conversation about their day, all of the YULA staff has shown attentiveness and empathy in connecting with the young adults on a personal level. I am excited to continue working with YULA as we send off the current class to their internships and welcome a new group of students into the program in mid-August. My next report should be in right before our orientation week for the incoming class, so stay tuned for that! Until next time, Olivia Fritz Hi all--
My name is Sungmoon, and I'm a rising senior majoring in Urban Studies with a concentration in Urban Society and Social Change. Though I'm interested in public and urban policy, many of my professional interests lie in the international relations and foreign policy arena; to explore these interests (which aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive from my studies), I'm interning with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington DC this summer. Senate recess just ended, so things have really ramped up this week. (And the next Senate recess may be delayed, so my internship just got a bit more interesting!) To start, a bit of background: the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee is the standing Senate committee in charge of foreign policy legislation. This takes on a lot of different shapes and forms, but since I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to attend hearings confirming ambassadorial posts, meet with key nominees for various positions, and write memos for Senator Cardin, who is the ranking member of the Committee. Through debating, confirming, rejecting, and deliberating on important treaties and legislation, SFRC has helped shape key foreign policies in the United States, ranging from the establishment of the United Nations to the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles to the passage of the Marshall Plan. The Committee works closely with the State Department and other bureaus and branches of the federal government. SFRC is also one of the oldest committees in the US Senate, which is really cool to consider; at the start of the internship, we (the interns) had a chance to tour the Democratic cloakrooms and the various conference rooms. The rooms themselves were incredible pieces of history that played host to various heads of state and royalty from all over the world; it felt surreal standing in the same spot as they did. Within SFRC, I'm working on the Economic Statecraft and East Asia-Pacific portfolios; this means a lot of different things, but my most recent projects led me to research and draft memos about the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, focusing on its global anti-corruption practices, as well as to track the newly released National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a (this definition is from Wikipedia, by the way) federal law specifying the budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense. More specifically, I looked into policies relating to North Korea and to the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative within the NDAA. I’m still working on North Korea-related issues (as part of the East Asia-Pacific team, the bulk of my research relates to North Korea.) There’s definitely a learning curve to get used to; though I’ve done plenty of research and writing before, the type of research and writing I’ve been doing here was fairly foreign (ha) to me. That being said, there’s a very strong sense of community, both between the interns and within the entire committee. It’s a tight-knit group, and though most of us are working on different portfolios or are focusing on different issue areas, it’s a very collegial, “got-your-back” atmosphere, which I really cherish. My fellow interns (there are 5 of us) are all incredibly smart, driven, and kind. It’s a really humbling experience to be a part of. There’s a stereotype that everything in government is slow and inefficient. There’s definitely some truth to this statement and there’s definitely frustration surrounding the bureaucracy that infiltrates the system, but I’ve come to realize that everyone here—both with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and with personal offices—works really, really hard to get things done. Everything in Washington requires many, many hands and many, many hours. Though I’ve only been here for a summer, my view of inner workings of government has already changed dramatically. This is my first summer in DC and my first Hill internship; I've always wanted to experience Washington, and it's been an incredible experience so far. I’m excited that I’ve been actually doing substantive work, and I’m excited to continue to contribute through the rest of the summer. From foreign policy perspective, it’s an especially crazy time to be in Washington, and I’m so thankful and grateful to be here and to be experiencing it all. Til next time, Sungmoon Hello! My name is Momo and I am a rising 5th year undergraduate student. I am double majoring in Music and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and have a minor emphasis in Product Design. This summer, I am in the Bay Area interning with the Hip Hop Therapy Global Institute (HHTGI), which is an organization that is still in the building process. HHTGI aims to become the hub for all things hip hop therapy and education, and hopes to aid practitioners and participants alike by providing resources pertaining to the use of hip hop music as a tool for therapy and education.
Hip Hop Therapy is a growing field in the greater topic of therapy and youth education. It builds upon the field of music therapy, which is something that I have been interested in and involved in since high school. However, unlike art therapy practices that are commonly used in this country, a focus on hip hop therapy allows for music therapy to reach new audiences. My supervisor in particular started practicing hip hop therapy as a high school counselor specifically addressing struggles within young men of color students. He noticed that these students were already using rhymes, beats, and hip hop music making to express themselves. By adding professional guidance to that pre-existing practice of self-expression, these students were able to build their skillset for promoting their own wellbeing. In my personal life and in the mental health advocacy work I do on campus, I think a lot about meeting people where they are at. Hip hop therapy is a perfect example of meeting youth where they are at, instead of imposing an outside framework on them and expecting it to be effective. I am drawn to the area of hip hop therapy because it represents an intersection of my interests: music, mental health, and social justice. This summer, I am helping with more technical aspects of the growth of this organization. One of the projects I am working on this summer that I am particularly interested in is working on the social media campaign for HHTGI. I am excited for how this work will help garner interest around hip hop therapy, and hope that it will reach a wide audience worldwide. I am also inspired by the ways that my supervisor envisions HHTGI being part of a larger network of hip hop therapy stakeholders. So far, I have been doing a lot of learning about network nonprofits and system leadership, which have been very interesting to me. I hope to carry these ideas with me to inform the ways that I approach my work in the future after Stanford as well. In doing my share of work for the summer, my background in Product Design will become useful. I am really looking forward to finding ways to utilize and build on my training in design thinking. As I do this work, I am thankful to be in the Bay Area, a landscape and culture that is both familiar and accessible to me, so that I am able to ground myself as I build and learn new things this summer. As HHTGI builds and grows, stay tuned! I am from the Bay Area and have learned significantly more about the local housing crisis through classes and student organizing in the past year. This summer, I am doing community-based research for three organizations that work in the unincorporated community of North Fair Oaks, often considered to be a part of Redwood City. My supervisors at Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto, Youth United for Community Action and Faith in Action are lawyers and community organizers, and they have asked us to research on the 2-3 year development strategy in North Fair Oaks in order to inform their work. North Fair Oaks has historically been a low and middle income neighborhood, with 73% of the population identifying as Hispanic or Latino. However, the community is changing rapidly; it is located right in between the transit corridors of 101, Caltrain and El Camino. It is a few miles from the new Facebook campus, across the street from the new Stanford in Redwood City campus, and at the center of new office developments along 101 and downtown Redwood City. As a result, it is a hotbed of rising rents and forced displacement. More and more residents are being pushed out and are now commuting to work in the area for 2-3 hours a day. Landlords have cited Facebook, Stanford and the new office developments in legal proceedings as they defend their exorbitant rent increases, because they know highly paid employees are looking for housing in the area. Housing Crisis in San Mateo County Quick Facts:
The crisis stems from the fact that not enough housing is being built in the region to accommodate for the job growth and influx of new residents. In San Mateo County, we can see that we are almost permitting the total number of housing units needed. But who are those homes for? We are building over 200% of the housing needed for people who make above moderate incomes, and in between 20% and 25% for all other income levels. While the long-term solution is building more affordable housing throughout the region, the short term solutions include tenant protections and negotiating community benefits in the development permitting process itself. Because North Fair Oaks is unincorporated, there is no government solely accountable to the residents of that community. The County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors-- elected by the entire county-- is the governing body that oversees the community. As a result, tenant protections are not politically feasible immediately, although displacement is happening right now. One of the only tools we have is involving in city and county planning and permitting processes to demand that development is mutually beneficial. And North Fair Oaks is inevitably going to develop more. The community, along with most of Redwood City next to it, is a Priority Development Area (PDA) according to Plan Bay Area, the regional planning effort to plan for the expected 2 million more people who will come to the area in the next 30 years. PDAs are intended to absorb two-thirds of that population growth. Plan Bay Area intends for the population of North Fair Oaks to grow to 22,000 in 2040 from 8,400 in 2010 (a 260% increase) and for jobs to increase by 157%. Studies show that the placement of PDAs is more likely to be in lower income tracts that are at risk of displacement, undergoing displacement or have already experienced displacement. Areas with no PDAs are more likely to be higher income tracts that show signs of stability and exclusion. The placement of PDAs is part of the Bay Area's Transit-Oriented Development efforts (TOD). While TOD does have benefits for low income communities -- low income folks are much more likely to use public transportation than high income people living in the same place -- transit centers and transit corridors are also proven to be one of the highest indicators of gentrification and displacement risk. The County has already started preparing for the anticipated growth. The County Manager's office is running a campaign called "NFO Forward", a beautification and rezoning effort. Projects have included building more sidewalks, installing public art, reducing dumping, and improving Middlefield Road, the central business area. They congratulate themselves for their excellent "community involvement" and have a community council that can make recommendations to the county, but based on what I have seen and heard from community organizers, this involvement is extremely unrepresentative. The community is 73% Hispanic or Latino, but at the Community Council meeting I went to, the audience consisted of 20 white residents, most of whom were concerned about the noise and traffic potentially caused by the expansion of an "innovation" centered private school that does not serve children from the community itself. And regardless, the beautification and rezoning efforts do not make up for the years of the county's neglect of the public infrastructure. All of this public investment has been deserved by the current residents for years, but that deservingness is not why the investment is coming; these efforts are for the higher income residents who are not here yet. What is my project? I am researching developments in North Fair Oaks and the surrounding to show development patterns and what areas are susceptible to development. The research is culminating in a map that will show information about past developments, current developments, zoning and land use where potential development is possible, PDAs, demographics, political representation and more. I will also possibly be making a Community Benefits Agreement Toolkit, although this is a less developed project as of right now. Essentially, I am making tools-- maps, graphs, infographics-- for community organizers, leaders and residents to use. Most of these tools show the data and statistics behind what residents already know through experience about displacement susceptibility, but can hopefully be used in cohesion with their own experiences in activating and mobilizing residents and interfacing with city and county officials. Through the development map and toolkit, we are hoping to contribute to a regionally based narrative in North Fair Oaks-- that what happens outside of the boundaries of the community has an intimate effect on resident's lives-- and reframe development as something that should be mutually beneficial, with information about when one can intervene in the development process and what benefits residents can ask for. -Nani Friedman Greetings from Sunny LA, CA!
My name is Marisol Zarate, and I am a PoliSci Major. I am from San Bernardino, CA and am working in LA for Fostering Media Connections. Fostering Media Connections, is a non-profit that focuses on journalism to harness awareness of child welfare and juvenile justice. We do journalism on stories of triumph and injustice but also write reports on research and government legislature. We also try to provide information on grants. Our goal is to give everyone the ultimate tool-kit to be aware of the issues that surround at-risk youth every day, and the actions that can be taken to help them. I have always been interested in juvenile justice because of my hometown. My hometown is stricken by poverty and crime, and while most people tend to live in fear and move out as soon as they’re financially stable, I look at San Bernardino as my home. Juvenile justice is particularly important two me in two fronts. First, because I feel that in San Bernardino there is a lack of resources that children feel the need to commit crime, and second because I feel we are doing an injustice to children across the country who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. I identify with these issues because I lost my mother at thirteen. When my mother passed my family spiraled. My dad was barely home and eventually moved out, and I had serious thoughts about emancipating myself. But I was extremely lucky to have a friend’s mom take charge to take care of me. No documents. No papers, just care. However, I am aware this isn’t the typical experience for other children in the country. Although this is only my third week in the fellowship, I have learned exponentially. I am learning in depth information about the educational and social issues juvenile justice face, and I have to say these readings are the syllabus I wish I had in school! I feel the issues we are studying are so much more urgent and relevant but are not talked about in the newspaper, social media, or TV. I find some days a bit difficult because I have never had to read and report on articles that are 35-50 pages long. I appreciate that I am being challenged and my writing is improving. However, I feel I have been experiencing glimpses of impostor syndrome, much more than I have ever at Stanford. It takes me a bit longer to write articles and my work always needs multiple revisions between me and my editor, and thus I think naturally I have been second guessing myself. I do try to stay positive and remind myself that I wanted this job because it would allow me to focus on a part of my academics that I felt needed strong improvement. I hope after this summer, I feel confident of my writing and have strong grasp on academia that discusses issues I care about. I feel this is the experience I needed in order to not only improve my skills but build confidence in them because I am putting in work daily to improve them. I feel the most important part of my learning comes from the content and the stories of the people whom I meet. When I talk to people I feel privileged to know about their personal struggles and triumphs. They inspire me to work harder and to not settle in complacency. They have also made me realized that there is never enough work to be done. There are too many racial, educational, justice and income issues that different communities face. Further, every day my editor is “awakening” me with new readings, and issues that need to be discovered. (He is honestly so knowledgeable, he can school me in anything juvenile justice.) Every day I am humbled to read stories of people who overcome their difficult circumstances and I am also further motivated by learning about those who are led to more and more injustice. It inspires to bring these issues back to Stanford and class discussions. I think through this fellowship I will learn more about how we can take action and how the White House is currently addressing (or not) the issues of children and child welfare. I hope to bring to you some tangible actions that can be done to advocate for this youth so that we can stand alongside them. The most valuable lessons I am learning from my job is to always have gratitude for the blessings you encounter every day, and that everyone deserves a second chance. I felt it important to share them because sometimes we tend to forget in our fast-paced lives. Hope y’all have a good week! Mari Hi from the newly designated home of the George Lucas Museum! My name is Joshua Seawell; I’m an Urban Summer fellow working in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity in Los Angeles. Specifically, I’m part of the Housing team, which is charged with overseeing the mayor’s vision for housing in the city and the various agencies that are charged with administering city and federal programs.
For those less familiar with the context, Los Angeles is currently experiencing what’s about universally considered a housing crisis. Housing and rental prices are rising to above pre-recession levels, far outpacing wages. The problem isn’t isolated to LA, as anyone from New York or the Bay Area knows. But it does put the dream and security of homeownership out of reach for much of the city’s population. As an urban studies major, these issues aren’t completely new to me. In many contexts, including the LA context, housing advocates and organizers are primarily focused on tenant rights and protecting the city’s most vulnerable from adverse change. Developers are focused on building more, working to reduce costs and regulatory burden; with a greater quantity supplied, prices should fall. The city is left to balance these interests, deciding the supply of affordable vs market rate housing, the size and strictness of rent stabilization, and the range of services provided to the homeless. These issues, and competing interests, were broadly familiar to me coming here. But a few things have surprised me: for one, the willingness of LA residents to commit to ameliorating the problem. In March, voters passed Measure H, which imposes a modest sales tax on the city to fund homelessness services. Measure H is expected to generate $355 million over 10 years. Voters also passed Proposition HHH, which will greatly expand the city’s permanent supportive housing. Secondly, I have been pleasantly surprised by the level of innovation and commitment that the city and state government are demonstrating. Recently, the state government passed a law permitting the construction of “granny pods,” which are essentially backyard houses (in which you grandmother might or might not live). LA officials are reversing the tide on the classic ever-expanding bureaucracy of housing construction, reducing unnecessary and costly requirements like a helicopter pad on every tall building. Government is often maligned as stale and unchanging, but that reputation is baseless here. We have more exciting projects in the pipeline. One policy I’m helping work on is the AHLF, or affordable housing linkage fee, which requires that developers pay a fee on market-rate housing to fund LA’s first permanent fund for affordable housing. It's pretty nifty, and would double the city’s affordable housing production in the future. If you’re curious about it, here’s its Los Angeles Times endorsement. And I arrived at an exciting time. After my first week, the mayor was inaugurated for a second term. He delivered a moving and optimistic address, which he previewed for us employees the day before! Here’s some coverage. (If you’re curious about Mr. Garcetti, I highly recommend his interview with the podcast Pod Save America.) This hasn’t been a surprise, necessarily, but I am also heartened by my office colleagues. Though they work on a wide range of projects (employment policy, homelessness policy, reentry policy), they share a deep dedication to to improving the lives of the city’s worst off. Many are accepting much lower pay than they could fetch in the private sector. Even with my limited time here, I’m convinced the city would be a much harder place for the most vulnerable without them. (Another non-surprise:) One of the reasons I wanted to work in local government this summer has really paid off. After some time that felt important, but removed, in federal government internships, I wanted to feel closer to the work I was doing. Now, I do. On the way to events or headed home, my supervisor has often pointed out rent-stabilized apartment complexes, budding construction projects, miscellany like the coming Lucas Museum, for which the city is responsible. To be reminded, visually, of the office’s work during an everyday commute has helped keep me grounded and accountable. For so many reasons, then, I am excited for the rest of my time in this internship. I have a lot of work left to do, hopefully contributing in some small, equitable way to the city’s housing stock and ameliorating the crisis. But already I have a more optimistic sense of how government can operate, how its employees can contribute to a better future, and how a skillful executive can balance competing concerns. It’s been a big few weeks! Thanks for reading My name is Gabe and I am a rising senior majoring in Urban Studies with a minor in Art Practice. This summer I am working with ALDEA - an interdisciplinary collective working to empower communities to take part in the development of their urban spaces and to use urbanism as a jumping point for civic education. Based in Santiago de Chile, they engage in a large variety of projects throughout Chile with different actors, communities, and organizations. Currently in my fellowship, I have gotten the chance to help with these varied projects, visit different sites and cities, and research topics such as heritage preservation, participatory research and design, and civic education.
Santiago is a giant city - both in its sheer size and its variety. In many ways it is familiar to me, being from Latin America myself. In others it is a completely new experience. Its recent history of dictatorship is still very much an influence today, fueling much of the current political discourse. As is common in Latin America, it is highly segregated by class with an affluent center and poorer peripheries. In terms of art it is easy to notice an appreciation for Chile's legacy and current development - with the poet Gabriela Mistral on the five-thousand peso bill and the impossibility of missing posters for the latest Chilean film to hit independent theaters. Food wise it is entirely different from what I'm used to growing up in Mexico, but immigration has created a very diverse and cosmopolitan food scene. On the other hand, immigration is a highly controversial issue, with recent waves of Haitian, Colombian, and Venezuelan immigrants causing divides and confronting a previously relatively heterogenous society with a growing multiracialism. It is a city filled with active discourse - I've encountered protests and massive strikes, political discussion groups, and cultural events relating to current issues. Santiago is a giant city - and with that come complexity and conflict. However, it also brings a richness of activity and vitality. My own experience living here has been split between two realities - studying in the Stanford center and living in the upper-middle class commune of Ñuñoa, and my fellowship with ALDEA living in a hyper dense, more mixed-middle class downtown neighborhood. The contrast is bleak but does not compare to the larger contrasts of the city - from the shiny "Sanhattan" financial district to underserved "toma" communities further out. My experience here has been very positive, with a lot of life and culture to explore. But this experience is informed by the context of the larger city, much of it still unfamiliar to me. Working with ALDEA thus far has been very active and varied. I'm involved in projects not only in Santiago but also in Constitución and Valparaíso. The projects range from a series of youth workshops, participatory design of a public green space with a social housing neighborhood, participatory research for heritage protection in a cemetery, and grant applications for a variety of future actions. Being in a small team of five people has given me the opportunity to be closely involved with these different initiatives, contributing in ways that help them and at the same time can serve as a foundation for my senior project. ALDEA's model of engagement is an interesting one, for they focus on using the expertise and resources of people on the team to connect communities to resources and empower them to take ownership of their space. It has made me think about the role of urban designers, planners, and architects - how can these actors best transfer their expertise as a resource to communities? How can we close the gap between development and community needs and vitality? I think about this from an ethical standpoint - in which ways is my help useful or hurtful to the people I serve? These are questions that will help guide my experience with ALDEA. Until now, I have been very impressed and inspired by the work they do, their passion, and the way they relate to the people they work with. Until next time, Gabe Haro I have lived in the same home in Los Angeles, California for my entire life. I grew up riding the metro to random places in downtown, and when I got my license, I drove to random spots just to explore. Los Angeles contains so many communities. When walking down the street, it is not uncommon to encounter cultures from all over the world in a single moment. The city is also known for its streets filled with foods and innovative cuisines, so much that it can be overwhelming. And on postcards, Los Angeles is depicted as forever sunny, with palm trees lining streets and mansions filled with luxury and class. That was the LA I grew up seeing. Though I prided myself in learning about and exploring all of the city’s corners, from Compton to East LA to Beverly Hills, I never truly knew those parts. I did not know the stories they contained. Now, working at Fostering Media Connections where I write for the Chronicle of Social Change, I have begun to take a deeper look into those parts I once thought I knew. Indeed this city offers skyscrapers, warmly lit beaches, and glorious shopping, but the city’s residents often do not match these optimistic images. In Los Angeles County alone, the Department of Children and Family Services serves roughly 35,000 children and families. The Probation Department oversees 6,000 youth, with 1,100 youth in juvenile halls or probation camps. In a 2013 study done by the Stuart Foundation, “At Great Risk,” only 45 percent of California’s foster youth were found to complete high school. And, on a national basis, 31 percent of former foster youth end up homeless upon leaving the system, according to a 2011 study conducted by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Furthermore, most of the youth placed into foster care have had to deal with extreme trauma and instability in their households. The second most common cause for entry into foster care system nationwide is parental substance use disorder. About 32 percent of children entered foster care partially due to parental drug abuse in 2015, a 10 percent rise from 2005, according to Child Trends’ analysis of 2015 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) data. With Fostering Media Connections, I have been able to look at these statistics and truly learn about the issue at-hand. On top of that, I have met incredibly strong, brilliant youth who have been involved with the foster care system themselves. On just my second day of work, I was sent to interview foster youth, social workers, and audience members at an event called Celebration Graduation 2017. Taking place in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the event not only honored graduating high school seniors but also awarded college scholarships. Each of the students overcame challenges as part of Los Angeles’ foster care system and are now graduating with at least a 2.8 GPA with plans to attend a college or vocational school. I was able to speak to several foster care youth, and every single one amazed me. In particular, I remember the story of one young woman, Samantha, who is now on her way to attending the University of California, Los Angeles in the fall to major in Political Science. Until 6th grade, Samantha grew up with a mother who struggled with drugs and an abusive father. As a 5th grader, she grew tired of her home situation and took the initiative to independently meet with a social worker. 3 days later, she and her 2 younger sisters were separated from her parents and placed into separate foster homes. Questioning her decisions after being unexpectedly placed into foster care, Samantha felt regret, despite knowing it was ultimately “the right thing to do.” After living in a foster home, she and her sisters moved in with extended family where they still felt like they were living among strangers. As she looked for ways to improve her circumstances, she concluded, “Education was the only way out.” In high school, she participated in student government, volunteer work, and cheerleading, in addition to excelling in honors and AP classes. Throughout her life, Samantha was able to push herself, without the support of a stable family. She excelled in school and successfully navigated the college process, despite so many obstacles. Unfortunately, however, she is not representative of the majority of youth in foster care. According to a study done by the Stuart Foundation, “The Invisible Achievement Gap,” approximately 50 percent of foster youth graduate from high school compared to 84 percent of non-foster youth students. Looking at these numbers and hearing those stories, I cannot help but reflect on how I have gotten to where I am today. I had the constant support of my family, financially and emotionally. I went to arguably the best private high school in LA and now attend one of the top institutions in the country. However, when I see these students conquer so much – without all the resources and support that I had desperately needed growing up, I cannot help but be in awe. So, for most of my internship thus far, I have been taken back by the figures and people whom I have met. It has only been a few weeks, but I have already learned so much about the perspectives that usually go unheard. And, I have the privilege of writing about those stories and bringing them to the forefront through the Chronicle. Looking to the coming weeks, I am excited to learn more. I am also incredibly grateful to have this opportunity and experience. - Stephanie Pham |
AuthorThis blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs. Archives
September 2018
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