more’s SEE-Beyond funding. And this summer the New World Fellowships have ramped up to support a full complement of 15 students.
BOOTS ON THE GROUND
Clarivel Gonzalez and classmate Brendis Gonzalez (no relation) describe last sum- mer as “very intense but very rewarding.” Clarivel worked 9 to 5 at the Brooklyn Movement Center, and Brendis put in her 40 hours a week at New York City’s De- partment of Youth and Community De- velopment. Another New World Fellow, Kavey Vidal ’15, worked for the Probation Department’s South Bronx Neighborhood Opportunity Network. Nights and week- ends, their Roosevelt Institute studies in- cluded developing a new policy initiative and pitching it to potential funders. Clarivel’s day job was to build the membership of the young Movement Center, which supports parents and oth- ers seeking to improve public schools. She organized the member database and also “handed out flyers and went door- to-door to enlist new members.” By sum- mer’s end she’d planned the center’s im-
employed. Brendis and Clarivel’s team came up with “Hubbub, an easy-to-use database combining job listings, GED informa- tion, and other resources that are already out there but are hard to find,” Clarivel explains. Vidal’s team proposed giving out free public-transit cards in return for com- munity-service work.
FOLLOWING THROUGH
KAVEY VIDAL ’15 AND NEW WORLD FOUNDATION OFFICER NOAH BERNSTEIN
portant annual meeting for September: “I was back in classes, but I heard it was a success, which made me happy.” Brendis was happy too, thanks to “a great boss.” A social- work major and education minor, she says her commissioner “met with her four interns individually to learn our interests and describe what our projects would entail. And she was con- stantly helping us meet and network with other staff.” In de- veloping a “college and career awareness week” to get schoolkids thinking early and positively about their options, Brendis says, “we got Google and Facebook, several colleges, and the TV network Univision to partner with us, and we toured their offices.” A health and exercise sciences major with a minor in intergroup relations, Vidal shadowed pro - bation officers, supervised youths doing Superstorm Sandy restoration as part of a program to move them out of the crimi- nal justice system and into civic engagement, organized a GED signup fair, and more. “On my last day,” he recalls, “an hour- long interview with a client turned into four hours. I personal- ly enrolled him in a GED class and called our partner organi - zations to find him a job. Our conversation will always be in my heart, because when he left the office he thanked me for changing his life. “
Come fall, Michelle Hubbs, Skidmore’s di- rector of community service programs, who’d lined up the fellows’ summer placements, found them work-study jobs at Saratoga agencies. Part of Clarivel’s work at the public library was helping its computing instructor to offer courses for Spanish speakers. She says some enrollees had no prior computing experience, and “I could see in their eyes that they needed my help, so I was busy.” Weeks later, she reports, “I bumped into a guy from the class, and he gave me a big hug!” Brendis has been tutoring at Lake Av- enue Elementary School and also con- ducting research, such as “how different portrayals of socioeconomic status in Saratoga Springs can affect the students and their learning.” Vidal had a schedul-
STUDENTS LEARN OF NEW CAREERS AND “NEW WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE TO POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE.”
ing conflict in the fall, but, from his spring-term studies at the University of Queensland in Australia, he’s been lining up fur- ther policy work with Roosevelt Institute directors. The fall also included a one-credit seminar on social justice, co-taught by Hubbs and Associate Dean David Karp, a sociolo- gy professor. “It’s been wonderful getting to know all these stu- dents,” Hubbs says, “and the seminar with David helped pro- vide a continuum, linking their summer and academic-year work.” Meanwhile, she’s arranging next fall’s placements for this sum- mer’s New World cohort.
Associate Dean Sue Layden, acting director of Skidmore’s Opportunity Program, says, “What I love is seeing
the New World Fellows’ insecurities fall away and their confi- dence grow. Often they’re just rising sophomores, but they’re focusing their ambitions and plans. I’m seeing real energy and passion about why it matters to take their courses and do this work.” Brendis affirms that the experience “opened my eyes to what education reform really means,” plus she discovered the joy of networking “with people who are in love with policy and so passionate and knowledgeable.”
Off-hours, the Skidmore interns joined those from other col- leges for workshops on social policy research, grant-writing, public speaking, and more. And in small teams they studied, debated, and prepared a new policy to serve “disconnected youth”—teens and young adults who are unenrolled and un-
Layden notes that some OP students looking ahead to grad- uation feel torn between helping their home communities or forging a well-paid career. The New World and Roosevelt pro- gram “shows them careers they didn’t know about and new ways to contribute to positive social change. Instead of either- or, they see both-and.” Access to that kind of world view is what Skidmore aims to offer every student.
SPRING 2014 SCOPE 13
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