2007 - 2008
Project Descriptions
Boston Step Up
Whitney Hardy
Step Up is an initiative of Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the Boston Public Schools. This is a new joint partnership between the Boston Public Schools and five of Boston’s colleges and universities, including Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University, Northeastern University and Tufts University. The goals of this partnership are to offer programs and services to the BPS, focusing on academic progress, student and family wellness, as well as developing art, athletics and citizenship.
Broader Horizons
Alicia Zeh-Dean
Horizons for Homeless Children is a MA-based non-profit organization that works to promote play, advocacy and education for homeless children (and their families) living in shelters throughout MA. This project is designed to create occupational therapy assessments of three children’s centers run by Horizons and implement as many changes as possible for the better based on those assessments.
Cooperative Games
Alexa Fiorini
Catherine Maillard
Cooperative Games is an after-school program in the Medford Public Elementary schools that works in conjunction with their curriculum to promote the positive peace development of a child. Through games, activities, and discussions, Cooperative Games helps foster a child's cooperation, communication, conflict-resolution, and peacemaking skills as well as to provide children with a positive, fun, and safe environment in which to thrive.
Computers for Cambodia
Rishikesh Bhandary
Angelina Garneva
Rebekah Holtz
Constantin Sabet d'Acre
Yoonah Je
Computers for Cambodia is a branch of the French NGO International Funds for Children's Computers Assistance (IFCCA). On campus, it works under the umbrella organization Pangaea. Computers for Cambodia's goal is to provide information technology to children in need within countries in the developing world, giving them the tools necessary to their insertion in the services industry once they are old enough to work. The NGO's focus really is on offering opportunities to the children in the long run, as they will find it much easier to obtain a good work in an accounting firm or a hotel if they have basic educational requirements. Computer skills are one of these requirements. Orphans who benefit from this sort of education see their lives change as they find the chance to stay away from the rice farms and start new lives in the cities. To do so, Computers for Cambodia funds computer centers in orphanages and schools in Cambodia. In other words, it pays for the building, furniture, computers, internet access and professors' salaries.
Thanks to the Tisch grant and other co-sponsors, Computers for Cambodia will be able to have a large scale event this year which it is very much looking forward to: a Cambodian dance show. Bringing the Angkor Dance Troupe on campus, an extremely renowned professional Classical and Fold dance troupe, is a great honor and Computers for Cambodia looks forward to making this event a great success.
The Dominican Art Exchange
Anjali Nirmalan
In the Dominican Republic, many of the young residents of the "bateyes" - shantytowns where the sugar cane cutters and their families live - are barred from attending public school, let alone given opportunities for creativity. The Dominican Art Exchange will organize an exchange of art between American students, both at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Dominican and Haitian kids living in rural villages - while at the same time gathering sorely-needed supplies and funds for the free Dominican medical clinics run by the Timmy Foundation.
Education Action
Lolly Berger
Ali Gross
Debbie Neigher
Shiri Raphaely
This Project involves organizing a panel and discussion at Tufts surrounding the effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on the Boston Public School System. As the vote determining the reauthorization of NCLB approaches in the coming year, this is a particularly and relevant issue to the young voters on Tufts Campus. This project is operating under the assumption that before becoming active citizens, people must first become educated citizens. Therefore, in addition to the main event, there will be raising awareness of issues related to NCLB during a campus-wide campaign throughout the semester leading to the panel.
Food
Lauren Stahl
The women of Chi Omega are partnering with Dave's Fresh Pasta and
CASPAR, Inc. to cook and serve a meal for the entire 102 bed shelter.
Dave's Fresh Pasta will donate all the food and supplies as well as
teach the women how to make lasagna. Chi Omega will then deliver the
lasagnas to the CASPAR Emergency Service Center and feed the shelter
on a night when there is normally no cook. This event combines
community service and personal development in a social justice project
to fulfill the needs of the surrounding community.
Health Disparities
Katie Cohen
Morissa Sobelson
This project involves the formation of a Health Disparities Student Leadership Committee as the second phase of a new inter-collegiate, student-led initiative begun at Tufts with the Fall 2007 Health Disparities and Higher Education Symposium. The vision for this project is based on the reality that Boston is one of the nation's most prestigious hubs of cutting-edge medical training, treatment, and research, and yet it is also home to some of the most serious and shocking disparities in heath and health care, particularly affecting racial and ethnic minorities. Academic institutions have tremendous resources, responsibility, and potential to work with communities to close this gap. Thus, a group of 10-15 student representatives from various Boston-area schools will comprise the Health Disparities Student Leadership Committee. These students will meet regularly together and with local organizations and leaders to plan university-community collaborations, events, and activities to fight for equitable health and health care for all residents.
The Human Rights “Conscious Carnival and Sleep Out”
Michael Eddy
Phoenix Tso
The Human Rights Conscientious Carnival and Sleep Out will attract a diverse group of students not normally reached by campus programming through a fun, lively carnival environment that also incorporates serious educational and directly actionable components. It will culminate in the second annual Pangea sleep-out that engages a variety of Tufts student organizations in order to raise funds for an international non-profit organization yet to be determined. The goals of the Conscientious Carnival are, 1) to inspire and intellectually stimulate a broad range of Tufts students to think and act on human rights issues at home and abroad; 2) to demonstrate the importance of human rights, equality and justice to individuals not normally associated with the movement; and 3) to provide meaningful and directly actionable ways to support these causes.
The Pen Pal Project
Anna Drapkin
Erica Steinitz
The Pen Pal Project is a cooperative literacy project with John F Kennedy School in Somerville. The goals are to increase the amount of time students spend reading and to build a connection to a Tufts adult and the 4th grade student. Each pen-pal (Tufts and Somerville students alike) will receive 3 new age-appropriate books. The Pen Pals will read the books simultaneously and write emails to one another about the content in the books. The Tufts pen pal will write appropriate and critical thinking questions about the books both they and the Somerville student will be reading. Students will be encourages to share their books and letters with family members. The program will culminate with a celebratory event to which all pen-pals, families and teachers are invited. At this event there will be a local children’s author/illustrator and the elementary pen-pals will receive a bound book of the emails from both pen-pals over the course of the semester.
Somerville Maple Syrup Project
Steven Fatur
Julie Furbush
Chris Mancini
For three years now the Somerville Maple Syrup Project has connected Somerville youth and Tufts student volunteers in an environmentally-based education program designed to bring fascination, importance, and resourcefulness of the surrounding environment back into children’s daily lives. From time spent in the classroom talking about photosynthesis, the parts of a tree and evaporation, to tapping Maple trees on Tufts campus and around Somerville (some in their very own backyards), the kids spend the Spring conscious of the season-change and preparing for the Boil Down event in March when they see the sap they’ve helped to collect boil down to maple syrup.
Student Research Conference
Elizabeth Bontrager
Sarah Sliwa
Aliza Wasserman
The Friedman School Student Research Conference presents a unique opportunity for graduate students across the country to present original research and to spark dialog across disciplines. The conference will include an expert panel presentation and awards recognizing excellence in graduate student research.
Teach in CORES
Elizabeth Aronson
Gabrielle Green
Laura Kaplan
Carter Koppelman
Teach in CORES provides English language and citizenship classes to immigrants at the Committee for Refugees from El Salvador (CORES) community center in Somerville. Most CORES students immigrated to the United States from El Salvador and now live in the neighborhoods around Tufts. Last year, Teach in CORES expanded to offer beginning, intermediate, and advanced English classes five days a week. Teach in CORES works in consultation with Marcos Garcia, the director of the CORES center, and depends on more than thirty Tufts students who volunteer for semester-long teaching positions. In addition to offering basic English tutoring, Teach in CORES represents a crucial intermediary between the students' homelands and the United States. The initiative provides CORES students with the knowledge necessary to integrate successfully into U.S. society. At the same time, Tufts student-teachers learn about the realities of immigrant life and the culture of each student's home country. The reciprocity of Teach in CORES represents one of its underlying strengths; both the CORES students as well as Tufts teachers walk away from this experience as changed individuals and, more importantly, changed citizens in the community.
Tufts International Orphanage and Educational Outreach
Maryna Vashchenko
John Hugg
Iris Chin Ponte
Dmytro Say
Yibing Li
This group will work with multiple organizations in China, Ukraine and the United States to improve the lives of orphans by raising awareness in both the academic communities as well as the public communities. Our program is divided into three divisions; the website team, the fundraising/advocacy team and the education and outreach team. Each team is lead by a graduate student in the Tufts Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development. The website will hold recently published research reports and student work concerning international orphanages and conditions of abandoned children, volunteer opportunities, supports for local families and group fundraising efforts. We hope that this website will become an online arena for the advocacy of orphans as well as portal for information sharing and networking between American and international organizations. The fundraising/advocacy team will organize events to raise funds for orphanages in need. Lastly, the education and outreach team will organize public lectures on campus. These programs will be geared for both interested students as well as to families that are considering or have already adopted children internationally.
Worchester Pet Vaccination Day
Kathleen Riley
The Shelter Medicine Club at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine will be hosting a vaccination day for pet cats and dogs at the Worcester Animal Rescue League (WARL) in early Spring 2008. At this event, pet owners in the Worcester area can bring their dog or cat in for free vaccination by students and supervising faculty from the Veterinary school. This event will be held at the WARL to help raise awareness for their mission, as well as build a relationship with the Tufts community. Pfizer Animal Health, a manufacturer of companion animal vaccines, has agreed to help with a donation for this event.
Yonso Project
Anthony Caccavo
Julia Miller
Daynel Ingram
Denise St. Peter
Megan Kearn
The Yonso Project PenPals program was started through the Yonso Project in association with the Yonso Students Union of Yonso Ghana. This program currently connects approximately 500 Ghanaian students of all ages with students here in the United States and hopes to increase this to over 1,000 by the years end. Although the program initiated in Vermont, it is currently expanding to the Medford, Somerville and Greater Boston area. The PenPal program acts as a means of expanding children’s global and cultural horizons while also providing a way to learn basic reading, writing, and English skills. Tufts students give presentations in classrooms explaining the culture of Ghana, writing tips, and serve as liaisons between the students and teachers to the culture of their penpals.
Read about 2006-2007 Civic Engagement Fund Recipients here.
Read about 2005 Civic Engagement Fund recipients here.
