NICOLE ARCE                        Pomona College

In partnership and collaboration with Padres Unidos de Pomona, Nicole intends to create and facilitate support groups for parents, for their children, and for families in Pomona, California.  With professionals in the mental health field, she will also organize mental wellness workshops for the parents. In addition, she proposes holistic elements for the families related to Padres Unidos, such as weekly yoga classes, a book club focused on wellness topics, and an outdoors retreat for positive connecting with the natural world.

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WILFRIDO BATISTA                 Pitzer College   

Wilfrido is calling for expanding upon the current mutual aid work keeping their home community alive. Concerned for the further need of environmental justice and mutual aid among Black, Indigenous, disabled, queer, and other marginalized community members, Wilfrido proposes a herbal justice healing project in their home community of Harlem, New York. In partnership with WE ACT for Environmental Justice, local herbal apothecaries, and urban farms, they intend to expand the outreach work these organizations are doing through herbal healing and herbal justice workshops in person or on Zoom.

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FRANCHESCA FU                    Scripps College

Through her commitment to support environmental sustainability and alleviate food insecurity especially during this pandemic challenge, Franchesca proposes to enable the building of urban community gardens for residents in various neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile. In partnership with Cultiva, a Chilean organization that works to connect individuals with their environment in a sustainable way, she will enlist volunteers, meet with them to develop processes for developing and maintaining the gardens, and work with gardeners to alleviate food insecurity and build shared identity among neighbors.

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RAY HILL-CRISTOL                   Pitzer College

As one who grew up in a collective household that is part of a land trust named the Life Center Association (LCA) in West Philadelphia, Ray intends to return to that land trust in order to build a Time Bank system for the LCA.  He believes that such a system, a form of solidarity economics, would allow participants to use time/labor, instead of money, to pay for goods or services.  In collaboration with the LCA board, he also intends to build and enhance the LCA’s organizational capacity, relationships, and sustainability. He  understands his Napier project to be directly accountable to the collective needs and mission of the LCA.

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SAMHITA KADIYALA                 Scripps College

As one for whom entrepreneurship has been formative, Samhita proposes to expand the Back-to-Business after-school youth entrepreneurship program that she founded in 2019. In partnership with ReachOut, a nonprofit organization in Upland, California, that provides safe after-school spaces for opportunity youth and youth in the foster-care system, Samhita currently is working with high school students and their college student mentors in weekly Back-to-Business sessions. Her goal is to ensure the program is sustainable during the summer months, culminating in a two-weeks summer bootcamp led by current program students, and then continuing after the summer.

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ANGEL SHERPA                       Pitzer College

In concern to improve health care in rural areas of Nepal, Angel proposes to establish a socio-culturally respectful telemedicine program in Simigaun, a remote Himalayan village in the Dolakha district of Nepal where there is no doctor. Partnering with and supported by the National Innovation Center (NIC) and the Pitzer in Nepal Program, she intends to work with engineers at the NIC to develop the first website/app in Nepal that will connect volunteer doctors in Kathmandu to patients in the village. She will then go to Simigaun with healthcare professionals to set up the telemedicine infrastructure and to facilitate communication between patients there and physicians in Kathmandu.

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ANDREA ZAVALA                     Harvey Mudd College

Partnering with ProjeKt Inspire, a STEM outreach program based in Tanzania, Andrea proposes to increase career development for youth in East Africa, including encouraging young students to explore STEM as a viable career option.  She hopes to increase the female to male participation through encouraging efforts to recruit young women and to ensure that the ProjeKt Inspire STEM bootcamp and a soon-to-be-opened science center will be inclusive and welcoming of women.

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