Unlike many students who enroll in coursework associated with Community Learning Partnership programs, Nina Tinikashvili already had quite a bit of experience as a community organizer while a college student at CUNY’s City College in New York.
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You're organizing when you attend a Parent-Teacher Association, or a Neighborhood Association. That was really eye-opening about CDP. I’ve been doing these things all my life.
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As a high school student, Angelica Esquivel didn’t think college was for her. Sure, it seemed prohibitively expensive. But mostly she figured the challenges to obtaining higher education as an undocumented student were insurmountable.
“I wasn’t really ready,” Angelica admitted.…
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Guadalupe Vidal never thought much about community organizing. That quickly changed, however, when President Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides protections to undocumented students.
Guadalupe on a recent trip to Mexico where, thanks to…
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Yatziri Tovar, advocate for immigrant rights
Yatziri Tovar was not a novice to community organizing when she enrolled in the “Community and Political Organizing” course taught by Professors Hillary Caldwell and Susanna Blankley at City College during the Fall 2016…
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Ashley Freitag, On Rising to New Leadership Challenges
Ashley Freitag first came by her interest in social change work through an unlikely source—photography. “I enrolled at MCTC in the journalism program,” she explained. “I saw photo journalism as a way…
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Fatima Nkata, on the Importance of Developing Leaders
Fatima Nkata, a student at Henry Ford College, is originally from Malawi, where she worked in the media industry. “In that work, I met a lot of politicians and started coming up…
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Cynthia Brown, on Breaking Down Barriers
At first, Cynthia Brown was drawn to the Community Leadership Program at Henry Ford College for its focus on socioeconomic justice. “I really like helping people,” she said, “and thought this would be a…
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Arjun Gadkari, De Anza Student Government Leader, on Learning to Love his Community
Arjun Gadkari has always had a passion for focusing on issues of injustice, even if those issues didn’t always affect him directly.
“Since childhood, I had been…
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Thảo Lê, DeAnza Student Government Leader, on Developing a Social Justice Language
Growing up, Thảo Lê recognized injustice when she saw it, but in high school, she didn’t always have the words to describe it. “I come from a working…
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