Seven ways UC Davis students will change the world this summer
Undergraduate students will be putting their educations to work alleviating poverty around the world this summer, many of them before they even graduate.
Seven students from a wide array of majors in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science — in the social sciences, humanities and mathematics — have been selected as Blum Center Summer Fellows for 2016.
With support from the college and its three divisions, the UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies awarded the students up to $2,000 each for projects developed in partnership with faculty on campus and organizations around the globe.
They are among 24 students from across UC Davis selected by the Blum Center to receive the Poverty Alleviation Through Action grants.
Tu Jarvis, a professor of agricultural and resource economics and the faculty director of the Blum Center, said interest in the program is growing. Three times as many undergraduates applied this year than did in 2015, he said.
Established in 2010, the UC Davis Blum Center is part of a network of interdisciplinary hubs at UC campuses focused on understanding and acting on global poverty.
Summer Fellows from the College of Letters and Science said they can't wait to get started. “I want to put my best effort out there,” said Jessica Gutierrez, a political science major who will spend the summer in Guatemala. “I want to make sure it makes a difference, even if it’s only a small impact.”
Helping human trafficking survivors
Shelina Noorali won’t need a passport for her Blum Center Summer Fellow international project. She will work with a nonprofit organization in Sacramento helping human trafficking survivors from around the world.
Noorali said she chose to work for the International Rescue Committee after learning that the region has alarming rates of labor and sex trafficking. “In fact, Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco-Sacramento areas are three of the FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas in the nation,” she said.
A political science major who graduates in June, Noorali will conduct research, outreach and training for the nonprofit organization’s HOPE (Human-trafficking Outreach, Prevention and Education) program.
In its first two years in Sacramento, the IRC helped more than 30 survivors of human trafficking, finding them housing and other services, including medical care, legal services and education.
“Some of the work that I will be doing is assisting survivors with immigration services and job training, in attempts to reintegrate them into society in healthy ways,” she said.
Noorali will also help with IRC efforts to train police, health care providers and others in identifying possible victims and getting them help without further traumatizing them.
“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that these individuals are served and respected. I hope to gain nothing but perspective at the end of this experience.” — Shelina Noorali
With an eye on a career in public service, Noorali has also completed a number of civic-minded internships—including stints at an education policy consulting firm, Congress and, most recently, with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change’s California Civic Engagement Project.
She is the founder of the UC Davis chapter of IGNITE, which encourages young women to become active in politics. She plans to eventually enroll in a graduate joint-degree program in law and public policy, possibly working in education policy before seeking elected office.
Renewable energy in Kenya
Funke Aderonmu’s idea for her Blum Center Summer Fellow project grew out of a seminar she took winter quarter, “Global Poverty: Think Big, Start Small.”
In the course, she and other students connected with some Humphrey Fellows as well as partners in the International Development Innovation Network, a consortium working on low-cost technologies to improve the lives of people living in poverty.
The “Global Poverty” course—taught by Kurt Kornbluth, a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Paula Balbontín, a graduate student in international agricultural development—is offered through the UC Davis D-Lab (Development via Dialogue, Design and Dissemination). A Blum Center partner, the D-Lab engages students in finding solutions to energy issues in developing countries.
Aderonmu, a third-year student majoring in international relations and economics, partnered with Bright Green Renewable Energy, a company that produces charcoal briquettes from recycled material for use in cooking and heating homes in Nairobi, Kenya.
“For my project, I will be conducting an assessment of current user experience with Bright Green’s charcoal briquette products, making product development recommendations based on the findings, and reporting on the environmental and social impacts of the products,” she said.
Her stay in Africa will be her second in two years. Last summer, she spent two months in Uganda, tutoring fourth graders in math and social studies as an Operations Crossroads Africa volunteer.
She said she’s looking forward this summer to learning about “the role that business and social entrepreneurship can play in combating poverty and social ills in countries in Africa.”
Her plans for a career in public service may lead her overseas again after she graduates in spring 2017. Down the line, she may pursue a master’s degree in international development or an MBA emphasizing social entrepreneurship. But first, Aderonmu said, “I am interested in applying for programs like the Peace Corps that provide the opportunity to work extensively in a developing country.”
Ecotourism and forest protection in Guatemala
A recent internship at the Pentagon, working nine to five in one of the world’s largest offices, taught Jessica Gutierrez something important about herself:
Before settling long term into a desk job, she wanted to put her youthful energy to work out in the world.
So this summer, Gutierrez will spend two and half months in Guatemala, working as a Blum Center Summer Fellow helping an environmental group and Indigenous communities develop ecotourism as a way to prevent deforestation.
Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala is a popular destination for tourists, with numerous Maya sites.
Gutierrez said that ProPetén, the country’s oldest environmental organization, would like to promote tours to the lesser-known Actún Kan caves.
She said her project involves working with community leaders on tourism planning, developing promotional materials and interviewing young travelers on how they choose their destinations.
Gutierrez, a third-year political science major, developed her project with the help of Liza Grandia, an associate professor of Native American studies who has written two books on the Q’eqchi’ Maya and collaborated with ProPetén to improve the Indigenous people’s lives.
In addition to saving the rainforest, Gutierrez said her the project also aims to preserve the Q’eqchu Maya’s cultural heritage.
“To protect the ecosystem, you need to protect the people who have lived there for thousands of years.” — Jessica Gutierrez
Gutierrez, who grew up in Santa Rosa, said she could have completed her bachelor’s degree in political science this summer after just three years at UC Davis, but thought the Blum Center Summer Fellowship was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
“I know it’s going to give me a completely different perspective on the world, and what I want to do,” said Gutierrez, who is considering applying to the Peace Corps or looking for work with a nonprofit organization after graduating next winter.
Mapping natural resources in Indonesia
Hendry Hendry’s project as a 2016 Blum Center Summer Fellow will take him home to Indonesia, but to a region vastly different from cosmopolitan Jakarta, where his family lives.
Hendry will work this summer with an organization called Bentara Papua, helping people in two remote villages in West Papua map their forests and identify non-timber sources of income.
The combined population of the neighboring villages of Manggroholo and Sira totals about 450 people. They are mostly Indigenous Knasaimos, hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers who have been resisting efforts by palm oil companies to make inroads into their ancestral forests.
After a week of orientation with Bentara Papua in Sorong, Hendry will make a half-day drive to the villages. He will spend four weeks there, learning what kind of help they need most from the nongovernmental organization.
“Basically, I’m going to be an observer. I’m going to follow the activities like community mapping of resources. I need to know how to deliver the help to them.” — Hendry Hendry
He will also work to create a profile of the community’s natural resources, such as the tree sap resin, rattan and bamboo that they harvest from the forests.
Hendry, a junior majoring in economics and minoring in computer science, developed his project with the help of economics Professor Wing Thye Woo as well as researchers in the Blum Center-affiliated D-Lab (Development via Dialogue, Design and Dissemination).
“For the first time, I thought I don’t have to be an environmental major to help with the forest,” Hendry said.
“Every student should get this sort of opportunity to do the project they have in mind,” he said. “You’re going to meet people and make friends for life.”
(Hendry grew up with just one name. It was doubled to give him a surname after he arrived in California in late 2013.)
An avid scuba diver and world traveler, Hendry hopes to work after graduation for a company bringing the Internet to remote communities in Indonesia, which comprises more than 13,000 islands. He also dreams of someday starting his own nonprofit organization to provide vocational training for coastal children and to protect the coral reefs.
Rainforests and Indigenous rights in Guatemala
Josh Paull, a third-year student double-majoring in international relations and history, will tackle two projects in Guatemala as a Blum Center Summer Fellow.
To start, he will work with ProPetén, an environmental organization focused on protecting rainforests in the country’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, to improve its Internet presence.
“The organization has won major conservation prizes for its path-breaking, sustainable development work … but many of these achievements have been lost to poor website maintenance over the years,” Paull said. “My primary work, therefore, will be to help redesign, revitalize and translate the organization’s website and to make sure that a local staff member is trained to maintain it.”
Secondly, he will work with a group called ACDIP (the Spanish abbreviation for Communities Association of Integral Development of Petén), which focuses on Indigenous rights and education. “I will be working in a high school for Indigenous Q’eqchi,” Paull said.
Last summer, he spent a month in Cuba on a UC Davis Study Abroad program. Working at the high school in Guatemala as a Blum Center Summer Fellow will take him another step toward his career of choice.
“My dream is to teach English in Latin America,” said Paull, who will graduate in winter 2017. “I’m really excited, because I feel like the opportunity to work abroad is crystallizing for me.”
Community service in Nicaragua
In June 2016, Susan (Suzie) Pizano will leave the relative comfort of life as a UC Davis undergraduate and undertake the longest trip of her life. Pizano’s journey will deliver her to La Calle Real, a small town in northern Nicaragua where the majority of residents live in extreme poverty.
Pizano is a 20-year-old rising senior from Ontario, California, who plans to pursue a humanitarian career after graduation. She arrived at UC Davis intending to major in psychology, but instead fell in love with mathematics, especially calculus. Traditionally, math degrees do not lead to humanitarian careers, but Pizano wants to apply math’s problem-solving techniques to real world worries. “My professors have encouraged me to explore outside interests and use my major in a way that makes me fulfilled and happy,” she said.
Working with volunteers from the nonprofit World Wide Child Relief Foundation, this summer Pizano will partner with La Calle Real community members, identifying their needs and what obstacles they face. The trip is funded by the Blum Center’s Poverty Alleviation Through Action (PATA) grant program. “It’s really awesome to receive the grant. I’m still excited,” Pizano said.
In La Calle Real, most people support themselves and their families through subsistence farming or small pottery businesses. Few families have running water, stoves or refrigeration. The public schools have excellent teachers but lack supplies and equipment.
The World Wide Child Relief Foundation provides education, services and community infrastructure in La Calle Real in hopes of reducing poverty. A native Spanish speaker, Pizano will engage with residents to promote services at a new community center. She will also teach English classes and folklorico dance. At UC Davis, Pizano is a member of Danzantes del Alma, a student dance troupe that performs traditional and contemporary Chicano/Latino dances. “Wherever they need me is where I’ll be working,” Pizano said.
Health education in Mexico
Stephanie Barrera, a fourth-year major in Chicana and Chicano Studies, will use her Blum Center Poverty Alleviation Through Action grant to explore health education and traditional healing in Oaxaca, Mexico.
“As the result of poor nutrition, unhealthy lifestyles and lack of education, chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension have become increasingly common in low income and indigenous communities in Oaxaca,” said Barrera, 21.
She will work with the UC Davis Studies Abroad Latino/a Health Internship Program, taking part in clinical rotations in hospitals and attending Spanish language classes with an emphasis on conversational Spanish in clinical settings. She is also interested in learning about the rich conglomeration of traditional healing practices in Oaxaca. She plans to apply to medical school after graduation.
“My career plans are to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology and to foster the creation of accessible and culturally competent clinics in and around the neighborhood that raised me in the city of Sacramento, with a focus on serving the Latino and Latina community and undocumented population,” Barrera said.
Barrera began her studies at UC Santa Cruz, but had to return to her hometown of Sacramento after her mother suffered a work-related injury. While caring for her mother, Barrera took classes at American River College and transferred to UC Davis earlier this year.
“I have never been able to travel abroad given the financial instability that comes from a single parent household,” she said. “I am very excited to have the opportunity to be a Blum Center Fellow for 2016 and to embark on a new and rewarding project abroad.”