CU Engage is pleased to announce that two CU 麻豆官网 graduate students,聽M贸nica Gonzalez and Danielle Garrison, have been selected to receive聽the 2016 Children, Youth and Environment Award.
M贸nica Gonzalez, a doctoral student in Literacy Studies, will use the award to support her project with youth at a local聽migrant community learning center, where she has worked with immigrant and migrant youth since 2013. The project, entitled "Youth Leadership and Activism Collective," meets once a week and focuses on challenging rigid notions of leadership and engaging youth in critical conversations about the intersections of race, gender, class, citizenship and eduation.
Gonzalez explains:
This summer, these young people and I will be collaborating in a Youth Participatory聽Action Research (YPAR) project that collects testimonios, narratives of marginalization, to document the聽histories and knowledge of [their broader im/migrant] community. Students will analyze these聽testimonios to make visible and potentially address the sociopolitical issues being faced and聽navigated by their peers, family, and community members. The primary goal of this YPAR聽project is to foreground family and community knowledge and narratives as a way to think about聽literacy within im/migrant communities while centralizing the inquiry and research process in聽young people鈥檚 knowledge, experiences, and expertise. Over a six-week period,聽8 young people from the collective will conduct interviews or semi-structured group聽conversations with each other as peers and with family. The youth will identify issues they聽would specifically like to learn more about and create interview protocols that focus on those聽topics. Young people will record, transcribe, and analyze all data. Analysis of the data will聽consist of identifying themes that surface from the testimonios and determine findings to present聽to the community. While I imagine students presenting their work and making suggestions for聽how to engage in sociopolitical action at a community forum, the young people will ultimately聽decide how they would like to showcase their findings and recommendations for social change.
For her project, Danielle Garrison will be using the CYE Award to support her outreach ballet program in with elementary school children in Denver. Garrison, a CU 麻豆官网 MFA Dance Candidate in the Arerial Dance Track, is an Aerialist, Dancer, Choreographer and Teacher. Her program will pair students from Johnson Elementary School in Denver --聽where 97 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch and where聽funding for afterschool dance classes is nil --聽with senior citizens living at the nearby Parkview Care Center.
Garrison explains:
Each ballet student will聽be paired up with a Parkview resident to hear a story about a challenge that the elderly person overcame in their life. Then each student will聽create their own dance that tells the story of this聽hardship,聽and the overcoming of that challenge, experienced by their elderly friend. Ideally, the聽students聽will find connections between the elders鈥� stories and their own, creating a piece that dialogues a聽multi-generational connection. In conclusion, the ballet students will聽perform their pieces for聽the community. The pieces will聽include physical and/or audial storytelling by the students and聽elders, giving the youth multiple platforms for voice.
CU Engage would like to thank all of this year's applicants to the CYE Award. We had a very strong pool of applicants.
Due to insufficient funding CU Engage is not able to administer this award in 2017.