The trek from the Connecticut College gatehouse to the Homeless Hospitality Shelter on Federal Street in New London takes 29 minutes on foot, 13 by bicycle, and 6 via car. It is a trip Conn’s PICA Scholars know very well.
The fourteen seniors in the certificate program have been involved in planning the annual Walk for Homelessness fundraising event for three years now, as well as tutoring, teaching, leading and learning from the greater local community.
The Holleran Center’s Certificate Program in Community Action and Public Policy (PICA) Last Saturday, scholars from the class of 2010 presented their Senior Integrative Projects (SIPs): the culmination of their research, PICA coursework, and internships, teaching professors, parents and other students about the projects, and defending and explaining their methodology and findings.
The College Voice had the chance to attend two of the four student panel presentations.
Students Kiara Fuller, Colleen MacPhee and Ashley Oldacre spoke in a seminar titled “Voices of Change: Survivors of Violence and Reflections on Empowerment.”
Fuller, a psychology-based human relations major with a minor in sociology, focused her PICA experience on domestic violence and methods of intervention. She completed an internship at The Community Foundation of Greater New Haven in New Haven, CT.
Inspired by a close friend’s experience with domestic violence, Fuller was motivated to change the world by discovering ways to stop it.
“I wanted to ensure that my work would stop another child from being harmed by domestic violence,” she said.
Fuller derived three main reasons for violence from her research: power imbalances between men and women; the way that a history of domestic violence in one’s life makes one either more likely to commit an offense or more likely to be attracted to an offender; and, finally, that self-esteem issues can lead victims to believe they deserve no better.
In her attempt to discover why domestic violence exists, Fuller is completing a capstone project in which she will document experiences of domestic violence victims.
Ashley Oldacre, an East Asian studies major, concentrated her PICA experience on narratives of female ex-offenders. She completed an internship in Des Moines, Iowa with the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her SIP is titled “Using Narratives to Reduce Recidivism for Female Ex-Offenders.”
Oldacre questioned why women end up in prison, and what happens when they leave.
These questions led her to stumble upon recidivism: 58 percent of women return to prison after five years. Oldacre discussed the number of challenges presenting ex-offenders upon their release, including the burden of caring for family and children, finding housing and getting a job.
The main difficulty with these simple tasks is the social stigma associated with being an ex-offender. As a result, any women ex-offenders are discriminated against in the workforce and society in general.
Oldacre began to research the power of narratives, verbal life stories, as a tool to re-integrate ex-offenders into society.
When you tell a narrative, she said, you reconstruct the past to make sense of the present and to understand the future. In retrieving memories, we draw upon events close to us, which can be a valuable experience for ex-offenders. Through these narratives, Oldacre hopes to tackle the problem of recidivism and keep ex-offenders from re-entering prison.
Colleen MacPhee, a double major in sociology and gender and women’s studies, focused her PICA journey on resources and support systems for homeless women who have survived domestic violence or sexual assault.
As an intern at Jane Addams Place in Philadelphia, MacPhee planned social events for the women and child residents and held a women’s writing course.
She explained the process as just that, a process. She was originally surprised at the women’s lack of enthusiasm to take her writing class.
MacPhee still believed that survivors of violence would benefit from an additional outlet to express themselves. After receiving a $500 grant from the Holleran Center’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative Fund, MacPhee decided to hold a creative art journaling course at the Women’s Center of Southeastern Connecticut for her SIP.
To date she has held eight classes which have integrated painting, drawing and writing.
After hearing that the writing and drawing help the women express themselves and detox, MacPhee hypothesized, “Creative journaling may be both a tool of empowerment and a medium as a tool for coalition building.”
The panel discussion “Perspectives on Human Rights: Education, Law and Immigration” featured students Molly Hayward, Deena Kimmel, Zoe Hull and Sarah Howe.
Hayward, a government major, concentrated her PICA experience on women in development and post-conflict recovery. She completed an internship at The Foundation for Development Cooperation in Queensland, Australia and studied abroad in Geneva, Switzerland.
While abroad, Hayward spent time studying the United Nations Development Program Rule of Law implemented in Darfur, Sudan, which led to her further research of development programs and their impact on women at The Foundation for Development Cooperation in Australia.
During her internship, Hayward concentrated on a program titled called “Bottom-Up Governance and Leadership Program for Women in the Pacific.” For this program, Hayward created a gendered monitoring and evaluation system and an impact assessment to evaluate its effectiveness.
Her SIP will emphasize the ways in which recovery and development programs can be evaluated for their positive impacts on females, and how to maximize positive outcomes within the programs.
Deena Kimmel, who is majoring in American studies, focused her PICA experience on finding a solution for peace in the Middle East. She completed her internship at the Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem, Israel.
After attending Hebrew school for the majority of her life, Kimmel had only heard the Jewish side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After working on the fourth annual Tree of Life Conference at a local church, Kimmel became educated about the Palestinian hardships involved with living in territories now occupied by Israelis.
“I came to realize that peace couldn’t be achieved if only one side was heard,” she said.
This new idea was reinforced at the Hand in Hand school, where Arab and Israeli students go to school together. Here, Kimmel helped teach English and art classes, and ran a three-week English camp for 25 students.
In the school, Kimmel realized that Jews and Arabs can live together peacefully. Children in the school had grown up together, and as a result their parents and teachers became friends.
“I really do think peace is feasible,” she said. “We just have to figure out a compromise that will make peace work.”
Zoe Hull, who is majoring in sociology-based human relations, focused in immigration policy. She completed her internship at the International Institute of Boston.
While abroad in Barcelona, Hull realized her true passion for immigration policy. Accordingly, she interned at the International Institute of Boston where she worked with many clients, including “asylees” (people already granted asylum) and people in the process of applying for asylum.
She described the subjective nature of judges and individuals who decide whether or not to grant asylum to those seeking safe haven in the United States. She explained that often, asylees from allied countries or those with whom the United States conducts business will be denied asylum on the basis that granting asylum implies that the United States is condemning events in that country.
“There is a new form of torture present in the United States: torture in the form of denial of safe haven,” Hull said.
Hull will soon be completing her SIP called “The Broken System: American Political Asylum.”
Sarah Howe, an international relations major, focused her PICA studies on children’s rights and immigration law. She completed an internship at the Refugee Council in London, England.
Inspired by human rights classes taken at Conn, Howe became interested in refugees, focusing on an underrepresented population: separated children.
In London, Howe worked with separated children in London doing anything from translating documents to finding lawyers to navigating the city with a child to find a doctor.
She expressed frustration at the xenophobic systems regarding immigrants in both the UK and US.
“We have this attitude that if they come here, they need to know our ways. But it’s not necessarily that they want to come here, they want to leave there.”
Her research in London led her to compare the American and British systems, concluding that the United Kingdom provides better protection for separated children seeking safe haven from persecution in their own countries.
Howe will soon complete her SIP, titled, “Separated Children Fleeing Persecution: A Comparative Study of Asylum Policies in the UK and the U.S.”
