蜜桔视频

December 28th, 2023   |   Alumni, Careers, Faculty, 蜜桔视频

The 蜜桔视频 community鈥攕tudents, faculty, alumni, and partners鈥攕tep forward every year to make meaningful change that affects our communities, our countries, and our planet. Here are some of the extraordinary 蜜桔视频 changemakers we had the privilege of profiling in 2023.

Colin Byers

As a staff member of a Union of Concerned Scientists, Colin Byers is working to make the U.S. electric grid more equitable. 鈥淎s stakeholders work to get renewable energy online quickly, it鈥檚 key that equity and justice are front and center," Byers writes. "If done correctly, the transition to 100 percent renewable energy could dramatically improve the quality of life for generations to come.鈥�

Amara Evering

Evering produced a radio series to get information to women in rural Namibia about healing. The seven segments address sexuality, eating disorders, intergenerational trauma, and more. 鈥淲ithout access to information, women are left unaware of available resources. So, there has been a need to communicate information to women in Namibia on a larger scale, despite infrastructural limitations,鈥� says Evering.

Amit Gerstein
蜜桔视频 Nepal: Development and Social Change
Gerstein partnered with a local makeup artist to create workshops for trans women and sex workers in Nepal, where communities experiencing high rates of unemployment were hard hit by the pandemic. Many were forced to go back to families that didn鈥檛 accept them and discrimination they had tried to escape. Gerstein said the workshops "helped marginalized people find jobs. However, throughout the workshops, I realized that we might be doing something equally as powerful: We were empowering people to be themselves, legitimizing thoughts and feelings that are so often under attack. If people recognize their own value, perhaps that can be a step in building a society that does, too."

Bahati Kanyamanza

As an advisor with the , Kanyamanza is working to ensure that refugees in the U.S. are well-supported and that the U.S. is a global leader in policies and practices that engage and fund refugee organizations. "The U.S. government pays critical attention to displacement and invests heavily in this work," he says. "If the U.S. does a good job, other countries are likely to follow suit. My role as an advisor is to make sure that I use my forced-displacement experience and expertise to shape better policies for refugees in the U.S and globally."

Brittany Lavelee

As a member of Pine Creek First Nation in northern Manitoba, Lavelee developed a curriculum on empowerment in First Nations resilience and sustainability, which includes an educational exchange that takes Pine Creek First Nation high school students to Indigenous communities across Canada and South America. The project uses a First Nations-based curriculum with land-based knowledge and field excursions. "Many Elders had told me that our youth must return to our roots to heal and overcome barriers," Lavalee said.

Emmanuel Orozco Castellanos

As a 2024 Rhodes Scholar, Orozco Castellanos will continue to address the Inter-American asylum regime and how the UN High Commission for Refugees operates in Mexico with support from the United States. 鈥淭he University of Oxford pioneered the field of refugee studies in the 1980s," he says. 鈥淚 am ecstatic to learn from some of the world鈥檚 most prominent experts in the field, many of whom have worked as humanitarians and have a holistic view of the realities of forced displacement.鈥� 

Cece Roth-Eagle

The Smith College journal Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism awarded Roth-Eagle the Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award for Prose for her piece, Month of Wind/Mes del Viento, which the journal describes as "a masterful blend of narrative with scholarly power." The 2022 Smith College graduate, who has a special interest in literary forms and Indigenous rights, lived and worked with a Jicarilla Apache community in rural Colorado before moving to Spain to teach English in fall 2023.

Ishmael and Shahida
蜜桔视频 South Africa
In Cape Town, South Africa, Ishmael and Shahida create a warm and welcoming home away from home for 蜜桔视频 undergraduate and graduate students, who share the family鈥檚 home and meals, attend community events, and become part of the family鈥檚 daily lives. At the same time, the couple, who have experienced apartheid and the new South Africa, shares the complex history and realities of their country. 鈥淚t changes their whole mindset,鈥� says Ishmael. 鈥淪o we also try and talk to them about our childhood, how we grew up. "

Angela Tucker

Emmy and Webby award-winning filmmaker Angela Tucker sees a common thread running her diverse body of films鈥攁 through-line that goes back to when she picked up a camera to film the arts and culture of Ghana with 蜜桔视频. 鈥淢y work is about representing underrepresented communities in unconventional ways. I think my Christmas movie had a place in my work as much as a documentary about forced sterilization. It鈥檚 about representation, and the importance of showing the experiences of Black people ... It鈥檚 about Black joy鈥攁nd that鈥檚 radical in a world that wants to show Black pain.鈥�

Dr. Leslie Turpin
Professor Emerita, 蜜桔视频 Master's in TESOL
Dr. Turpin retired in 2023 after more than 30 years at 蜜桔视频 Graduate Institute. Her legacy continues in the work 蜜桔视频 alumni are doing around the globe. 鈥淚 believe that the way to solve the world's problems is to learn better,鈥� says Turpin. 鈥淲e need to figure out how to learn differently. ... Language is the portal to that bigger question: What does it mean to learn? How do we evolve as human beings through the process of learning?鈥�

Ronan Wallace
蜜桔视频 Nepal: Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples
Wallace is using low-cost three-dimensional modeling to document climate-induced impacts in two villages in the Himalaya that are experiencing dramatic changes due to the climate crisis. His project 鈥渆ncourages communal voices to take center stage, spotlighting marginalized Himalayan communities struggling to adapt to anthropogenic climate impacts.鈥� He hopes the project will become a model for other impacted communities to use data-based storytelling "in a way that not only places communal voices ahead of our own, but also results in an effective resource for communal use.鈥�