Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

Students assessed the effects of one care farm location to discover ways to improve the positive effects of, and to collect data to support the promotion of, more farms in other locations. A key aspect was the issue of community building around these farms, and how students and families interact with the farm's activities. The students conducted interviews at one of the farm's sites (John R Wooden HIgh School) to collect these data, and also had frequent interviews with the organization's director.

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) builds community power and leadership for economic justice by focusing on tenant rights, healthy housing, and equitable development. 

In this project, a team of students from the UCLA Master’s of Social Science program (MaSS) developed and administred an evaluation survey to assesss the impact of SAJE's Tenant Action Clinic (TAC) . TAC is a weekly workshop run by SAJE staff and volunteering lawyers who educate low income tenants in Los Angeles County (predominantely Latinos, Hispanic and African American families) about their rights and advise them when they are faced with unlawful evictions and issues to do with inhabitability of their homes (i.e. code violations). The evaluation of TAC was executed through a series of structured interviews with tenants over the phone. Findings highlight the value that tenants see in TAC as well as offer a number of methods to increase attendance and to follow up with tenants to facilitate resolution of problems.

The members of "Asian Americans: #CountMeIn" have a collective vision: to integrate and answer to the needs and concerns of Asian-Americans in LA County by motivating the AAPI (Asian-American Pacific Islander) community to participate in the Census. As members of different AAPI racial groups, we contain a connection in regards to the struggles and needs of the Asian-American community - and hope to further tap into these connections through engaging in grass-root movements.

Thus, in an attempt to understand and increase low Census response rates of Asian Americans in Los Angeles County, "Asian Americans: #CountMeIn" conducted a 10-week hands-on project to engage, outreach to, and educate Chinese, Korean, and Filipino communities. 

Students completed archival research to document the history of commercial buildings and houses in Boyle Heights as part of a larger effort for historical landmarking and historic preservation of the streetscapes of Boyle Heights.

In December 2018, the Green Together collaborative, a diverse group of public and non-profit sector partners, received a Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program grant from the California Strategic Growth Council (CA SGC). The proposal focused on investments in Pacoima and Sun Valley, city of Los Angeles neighborhoods in the northeast San Fernando Valley with a long history of environmental injustice. The award will bring in $23 million of public money raised through California’s Cap-and-Trade program to the project area for development and infrastructure projects to achieve significant environmental, health, and economic co-benefits in the state’s most disadvantaged communities. While the significant investment is expected to generate numerous positive benefits for local residents and businesses, these transformative investments also bring the risk of displacement in the working class community. To address the possibility of gentrification and displacement, CA SGC requires TCC program grant awardees to prepare and implement a Displacement Avoidance Plan (DAP). UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) and Professor Vinit Mukhija from UCLA Urban Planning, are providing the lead grantee (Pacoima Beautiful) with research on how to develop a Displacement Avoidance Plan.

As part of their work with the Consejo de Federaciones Mexicanas de Norteamérica, students assist with commmunity outreach, citizenship workshops, and logistical support in Spanish. Some specific tasks have been carrying out phonebanking to explain the Water Talks initiative, conducting an opinion survey of community members throughout the San Gabriel Valley, assisting community members with census registration, and filling out the citizenship application form. Additionally, in 2020, students provided assistance with the transition of organizational resources to digital platforms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Final projects include the creation of  informational materials in English and Spanish regarding the Water Talks initiative, legislation to protect water reservoirs in the San Gabriel Valley, a digital petition in support of the legislation campaign, a video on the process to obtain citizenship, and bilingual electronic cards to prepare for the naturalization civics test. 

The students involved with the organization Knowing Neurons perform translation services and community outreach. The goal of the organization is to make neuroscience accessible to a broad public. In this particular project, students with a passion for both Spanish and neuroscience translate articles from English into Spanish, interview Spanish-speaking neuroscientists (see podcast section on the website), and conduct workshops for Latinx youth on the path to earn a STEM degree. The translations are reviewed and edited by a linguist, Dr. Carla Suhr from the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and a neuroscientist, Dr. Rafael Romero-Calderón from the UCLA Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program. 

At Spicy Green Book students were tasked to conduct comprehensive research of Black-owned restaurants in different states which would be included in the development of Spicy Green Book’s national directory of Black-owned restaurants.

The interns at People for Successful COrean REunification (PCORE) care deeply about the rights of North Korean people. Knowing those rights will be respected only when reunification happens, they try their very best to aid in making reunification happen faster.

Education Interns managed the education programs for North Korean defectors living in South Korea, providing them with additional educational opportunities and resources intended to help them achieve their educational goals and advance socioeconomically. They also managed the database of North Korean defector students and volunteer tutors and maintained regular contact with them. Interns conducted interviews and screenings to evaluate every students specific needs. They phased in a brand-new feedback system in order to get meaningful evaluation of their services and began a partnership with US high schools and universities in which US high school and university students helped North Korean defectors practice English conversation. Interns also had the opportunity to help with research grants and advocacy campaigns in order to raise more awareness about the human rights situation in North Korea.

Dr. David Shorter has secured a large community investment grant from the California Community Foundation (CCF) through his Archive of Healing, one of the largest databases of medicinal folklore from around the world. Over the next three years, the Archive of Healing will work with partners in Indigenous Tongva communities on projects related to community health and wellness. The $50,000 grant will provide a much-needed response to the damages brought on from COVID-19.

The intern developed their museum education project centered around bringing materials from a past exhibit on to an interactive online platform. They conducted research, made all the designs and incorporated a social justice and advocacy lens to shed light on issues of homelessness in Los Angeles. Further they investigated the history of homelessness in LA, causes of homelessness, public policy and stories and interviews from people experiencing homelessness that were a part of the Museum's One of Us exhibition. The intern also participated in weekly staff meeting to check in with their advisor and gain important feedback. They also got to learn about the process of developing new exhibits in partnership with community groups such as BLM LA.

This community engaged course (formally designated as NEUROSC 192CX; Drug Abuse and Society: Conveying Concepts to High School Students) is designed as a follow-up for Neuroscience C117/C277 (Drugs of Abuse: From Neurobiology to Policy and Education) and prepares students to give an accurate, knowledgeable and age-appropriate presentation in the area of drug abuse to students at local high schools. The course is designed to: a) increase course participants’ knowledge about drug abuse issues (including policy, biology and statistics) in our society, b) provide UCLA students the opportunity and training to effectively translate their learned information of abused drugs to an at-risk population and c) allow bidirectional communication between college undergraduates and high school students and teachers.

Mental health and experiences with trauma inform how people interact with the world around them and themselves. The Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI), located in Inglewood, California, is an organization devoted to supporting “youth and communities of color by empowering them to enact social change through research, training, and community mobilization,” emphasizing the importance of system-level interventions. SJLI’s current programs are designed to support young men of color — this community-engaged research project seeks to fill the gap and widen the scope of the organization’s programming to young women of color. Literature reviews and analyses of existing programs designed to support young women of color have been conducted to collate perspectives and strategies for supporting young women; the community members will be included in these conversations. Supporting young women is critical to creating a more equitable and person-centered society, and this work will foundationally invest in promoting such change, specifically on the West coast, where research indicates a gap in programmatic supports.

The current approach designed for improving elementary student achievement widely emphasizes a “one size fits all” model that is made to target the U.S. K-5 population. However, this method has been proven ineffective in improving nationwide K-5 student achievement levels. In order to address this issue, the literature has suggested that academically low-achieving elementary schools embrace community-based leaders that promote sustainable relationships and nurture higher student academic achievement. This paper utilized community-engaged research through the active participant observational model. A community-based organization known as Koreatown Youth + Community Center (KYCC) was closely observed in order to assess the tools used to serve their low-income, diverse K-5 students. The community-based organization’s assistive tools such as academic aid, social emotional learning curriculum, and surprise supplemental activities were looked at through the lenses of Andrew Furcos’ Legitimization Factors framework that determine if the partnership is effective, mutually beneficial, and sustainable. The importance and implication of this research may suggest that communities alike can use these factors or find other beneficial elements in order for CBO’s to stimulate academic achievement amongst disadvantaged K-5 students.

In this project, a team of students from the UCLA Master's of Social Science program (MaSS) conducted a phone survey to evaluate outcomes of a particular service of the Tenant Action Clinics (TAC) run by Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE). TAC offers advising and information session to support low income tenants in exercising their housing rights and reporting building code violations in South Central Los Angeles. The phone survey of tenants who attended TAC tracked the outcome of these educational clinics and found that approximately 1/3 of the tenants had successfully reported code violations, although only 1/3 of the reported violations were resolved by city inspectors or landlords. For the remaining 2/3 of tenants, major barriers to reporing code violations included threat of eviction from landlords in retaliation and language barriers in communicating with city code enforcement and inspectors.

At Freedom for Immigrants, students were involved in activities leading up to the development of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Complaints. Students supported with drafting and transcribing hotline calls from people in detention to document civil rights violations in immigrant prisons and jails across the country. 

At LA Forward Action, students were involved in various levels of political advocacy. Student’s supported data collection, conducted phone banking, and participated in community outreach efforts. Students' efforts contributed to expanding political education in Los Angeles.

While at the Grow Cycling Foundation, students researched how cycling has historically been an obstacle in the Middle East for women. Students examined the history of restrictions on cycling and how they have impacted women in the region. Students also researched resources available to women who recently immigrated from the Middle East and explored opportunities to provide outdoor programming. Students produced a report to capture the historical and political impact restrictions to cycling have had on girls in the region and recommendations to bridge this gap. Students’ findings will be used to outreach to Middle Eastern communities and athletes to expand community partnerships.

At Jumpstart, students implemented the Jumpstart curriculum in preschool classrooms and served as an aid to teachers. Students served on a team with 5-7 peers and worked directly with a local Jumpstart staff member on training, session planning, service opportunities, and more. Students efforts contributed to reducing the student-to-teacher ratio to 3:1 in almost every Jumpstart classroom, enabling children to receive an individualized learning experience and develop nurturing relationships with caring adults. 

Students assisted a high school leadership group at Nava College Prep Academy to plan and put on a suicide awareness convention. They provided background research on material to share, helped to organize student group participation, put together prizes and goodie bags, and worked booths during the convention.

As a cultural hub of cuisines from all over the world, Los Angeles is rightly home to some of the most delicious Mexican food. Despite its appreciation, often forgotten or overlooked is where and how Mexican food originated and its history of indigenous roots. Although pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine has not been widely studied or introduced to students in public schools, it presents an exciting opportunity to help shape how food can be used as a tool of social change and cultural appreciation. With a focus on the pre-Hispanic roots of Mexican cuisine, this research study focused on: 1) How decolonizing history transforms the narrative of Mexican food to promote cultural liberation and resistance and 2) How student engagement with culinary history and food reshapes their understanding of culture, identity, and sense of self? In partnership with a UCLA-affiliated after-school program, the development and implementation of a curriculum for a high school cooking class was enacted to teach new recipes and to engage in platicas (unstructured conversations/class debrief) that centered history and culture. Through these decolonizing methodologies and framework, the results and analysis indicated that culinary studies can provide a new approach to learning history and grow the appreciation and traditions of cultures.