Scholar / Project
Project: I have the privilege of joining David Purcella’s project Puppy Pals, which was created to assist and ensure success in school for students with disabilities.
Inspiration: My early dedication to education and advocacy for disabilities inspired me to choose to join David’s project.
Future Plans for Project: I aspire to change community’s perspectives of disabilities, spread education and awareness, and potentially change the lives of people who have disabilities.
Project: Creating a course and facilitating for 8th-12th grade high school students: Civic Engagement in Community and Career. Giving students the tools to engage effectively in their community.
Inspiration: Their commitment to social justice.
Future Plans for Project: To give students the tools and how-to’s to engage in their own communities effectively.
Project: A youth program designed to help children self-identify, raise cultural awareness, and help strengthen creative intelligence through cultural dance and art.
Inspiration: I am a lover of both dance and culture and I believe it is important for people to be sensitive to other cultures. I think the best way to open doors to new worlds is through art and dance. Participating in cultural dances that are different than your own can bring no harm and can spark motivation to dive deeper into learning about ones culture.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to help students become more aware of who they are and be able to explain where they came from and identify what certain traditions, symbols, languages and/or practices that their family participates in. From here I hope these students can compare the differences and similarities between their practices and others with an open and sensitive mind, all while having fun through dance and art.
Project: 1. To educated and increase awareness to others on the history of where the model minority myth came from and how it became a political narrative against other minority group.
2. To learn the methods involved in qualitative research and carry out a research project on the AAPI students population at CuDenver
3. To Create a Space for a AAPI students to share their stories/struggles to others through the use of interview/oral history
4. To developed and plan a space/event to showcase the stories of AAPI who does not fit the Model Minority Myth narrative by the sharing of their stories to the public for final project
Inspiration: As an Asian American student, I went through the same problem of trying to navigate through the school system while dealing with all the pressure on me. I hope to help students after me.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to dismantle the Asian Minority Myth and I also hope to help AAPI students after me. I hope they understand the different issues in their own community and continue to build a network of community engagement.
Project: I plan on using social media to promote a non profit Chicano art gallery to young artists and encourage them to use digital art as a tool to create awareness and provide a voice to the community.
Inspiration: Artists are the first on the scene to shed light on the social inequalities and movements. They are also the last forgotten. Colorado has one of the worst if not the very worst tax system in the country. One of the first things to get cut especially in lower income schools is the arts. The Chicano Humanities arts council is a non-profit art gallery in the Santa Fe arts district that provides a platform for local Chicano artists to display their work. The gallery also serves as a community space where other organizations can gather for meetings, fundraisers and other events. They provide art education to students now but they need to move forward into the 21st century and I plan on helping them do that.
Future Plans for Project: First things first, we need to create and establish a social media plan for short mid and long term. I hope to be able to set up a well oiled machine that any new communications team member can take over seamlessly. I hope to create program that maintains a digital media class which will teach local students basic skills of graphic design. I hope to secure funding for the program that will provide students who graduate from the program with a laptop computer and ideally the necessary accessories to pursue a career in digital media, graphic design or digital marketing.
Project: My Puksta project is furthering the prison activism work done by students at CU Denver. I have continued letter writing to inmates, editing the annual magazine, and distributing to other prison activists and political entities.
Inspiration: Prison activism ties together so many aspects that are involved in my life. The prison justice system is influenced by race, class, and power.
Future Plans for Project: As I have discussed with classmates and professors, I do not plan to bring down prison walls. However, I do believe this work will give a few people back the humanity they had stripped away when they entered prison. Additionally, this work can be shared to change the perceptions about inmates and prisons, and the harm this system does to our society.
Project: I hope to explore how food can serve as a form of intervention, empowerment, and restoration for incarcerated populations. A number of jails and prisons around the nation are implementing vegetable gardens, cooking classes, and other restorative food practices into their facilities. I plan to do more extensive research on such projects and gather community stakeholders together to start conversations about incorporating similar programming into Denver-area correctional facilities.
Inspiration: Through my own experiences, I see food as a primary method for building community and human connection. Additionally, cooking and eating with other people can be therapeutic, healing, and restorative. Once I started working within the prison system, I noticed how damaging some of the food practices can be for those who are incarcerated and how few food-related initiatives exist in the facilities I worked in.
Future Plans for Project: In the coming months, I hope to start conversations with community stakeholders about what improvements can be made to the food practices in Denver correctional facilities and the potential food-related programming that could be implemented into these facilities to bring about restoration and healing.
Project: To put together a nonprofit that will teach those who have been incarcerated the skills it takes to prepare for a job interview and provide interview attire for them.
Inspiration: After researching what the Puksta Foundation is about, I thought it would be a good fit for me.
Future Plans for Project: Help those who need help the most but giving them skills they can carry with them to have a successful life.
Project: I am gathering data and cliff effect stories to be presented to the New Mexico State Legislature this fall and possibly to Mick Mulvaney at a later date.
Inspiration: I was a participant in the anti-poverty program with which I now volunteer. The public policies currently in place make it incredibly difficult to move out of poverty and into financial self-sufficiency.
Future Plans for Project: People in poverty are often invisible members of our society. I want to give them a voice in helping to change public policy and changing the negative public opinion about the impoverished in our communities.
Project: I am focused on starting a networking club to help minorities find opportunities.
Inspiration: I saw that my sister and many minorities were having a hard time finding jobs and wanted to build a relationship with students and employers.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to build a bridge between students and employees.
