Funded Proposals

The Voice Behind Our Hands

What is home without “community”? Stories of Displacement, Resilience and the Immigrant Experience

The event welcomed over 100 attendees from Dartmouth, Colombia, and Mexico in both in-person and through a virtual Zoom platform at the Oopik Auditorium.  The event served as both a successful educational demonstration of the effects of trauma on migrants and a call to action to end it.

Black Legacy Month Field Day

Collaborators: Anyoko Sewavi ’23, Jennifer Chuks, Angela Brizant, Ana Sumbo ‘22

The Dartmouth Black Student Athlete Alliance hosted a Black Legacy Month Field Day in collaboration with Dartmouth Athletics and OPAL. The purpose of this event is to provide a space that allows Black students and staff (both athletes and non-athletes) to get to know one another outside of the classroom and de-stress. The connections that are made during this event will hopefully thrive beyond Indoor Practice Facility and will flourish within the Dartmouth community in order to help Black students and staff feel more connected and supported here at Dartmouth. 

Geisel BIPOC Banquet: A Celebration of the BIPOC Community in Medicine

Collaborators: Paulita Lara Mejia and Angie Lee, med students

This event will bring together Geisel students who are underrepresented in medicine (URiM) for an evening of celebration and dialogue centered around the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) experience in medicine. The medical school curriculum incorporates a longitudinal race and health equity component that is central to the development as physicians. However, it can be emotionally exhausting for BIPOC students to engage in frequent discussions surrounding the health inequities that impact their own communities. This event aims to shift the discussion and create a space of celebration of BIPOC in medicine. The formal dinner will celebrate students traditionally URiM, offer a forum for sharing experiences, and highlight the creativity, talents, and culture of our community. 

Understanding Social Justice, Approaching and Embracing Diversity

Proposal Team: Maria de Greiff (Lead), Alexander Cotnoir, and Maria Gonzalez Borgaro

La Casa, along with the Fuerza team, CO-FIRE and other colleagues from the Spanish and Portuguese Department, planned a series of roundtable discussions, exhibitions, lectures, poetry readings and film presentations about immigration and social justice. They invited a group of scholars, photographers, writers and independent film directors to discuss both their life experiences and work surrounding immigration and social justice. This series of roundtable discussions, interactive presentations, and lectures provided an opportunity for students and other community members to approach and learn about current affairs related to human rights, immigration and social justice. These events hosted experts from different fields ranging from journalism to activism, who brought their plural perspectives about social awareness, to facilitate discussions about how to approach and understand the immigration phenomena and its impact upon both our national identity and local sense of community. They were excited to facilitate such discussions at Dartmouth College, given the institution’s commitment to diversity, international identity and presence, and its concerns about global understanding and social awareness. 

Event Dates: March 4th, April 4th, May 16th, and May 31st, 2019

Balancing Ancient and Modern Knowledge

Proposal Team: Rebecca Emeny (Lead) and Varahi Trivedi

Public health and epidemiologic research are validating powerful truisms: lack of sleep, muscle movement, and meaningful connections threaten our well-being. This essential knowledge is reflected in literature and ancient cultural wisdom. Shakespeare’s Macbeth knew the blessings of a good night’s rest: “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, …sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds…” Yet how many know that natural killer cells emerge from bone marrow to fight infections while you rest? Or that only muscle movement squeezes surveillance cells through all the tissues of our body- making physical activity a critical component of a healthy lifestyle? And native cultures revere interconnectedness above all- exemplified in the Lakota expression Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, “All Are Related”. Yet how many, striving for independence and autonomy, fight loneliness and are deprived of the stress reducing, regenerative benefits of connection? All of us are challenged by balancing lifestyle choices to ward off stress, some are more motivated than others to MOVE, SLEEP and CONNECT. The proposal team proposed a poster campaign to encourage healthy behavior inspired by public health relevant biology with balanced sources of knowledge- old and new, and across different disciplines, to envision improved well-being for us all. The proposed funding went toward a public talk as well with the research clinician and Dartmouth alum Dr. Firdaus Dhabhar, Professor of Psychiatry at the Immunology Institute and the Cancer Institute at Stanford University. 

Guided Access

Proposal Team: Jessica Campanile (Lead) and Staci Mannella

This event featured students with disabilities (SwD)  – Jessica Campanile, Staci Mannella, and more –  guiding participants along the traditional Dartmouth tour guide route. The difference: each tour guide took their group of participants along the tour route that is most accessible for them, and recounted their experiences as a student, and particularly as a SwD at Dartmouth. This meant taking elevators, utilizing braille signs, service animals, or mobility aids, etc. They envisioned a Dartmouth community that approaches the disabled population with awareness, understanding, and inclusivity. They hope that “Guided Access” opened the eyes of fellow students, professors, administrators, and other Dartmouth stakeholders to the presence and experiences of SwD on campus. By providing a platform on which SwD can tell their Dartmouth stories, they called attention to this minority group on our campus, which is rarely recognized in or able to fully access minority- and affinity- related organizations and events. After the tours, they congregated in a classroom (in an accessible building on campus), and participants and guides called upon others to share their thoughts and reflections, and better understand the lives of SwD at Dartmouth. 

Event Dates: Week of May 27th, 2019

Harnessing the Discipline of Vision to Create a Sustainable World

Proposal Team: Jeremy Faludi (Lead) and Edie Farwell

Harnessing the power of vision helps us clarify, articulate, and plan the details of what a sustainable world looks like. This workshop helped participants determine their own visions, and use The Natural Step to create a broader global vision, as well as plan steps to make their visions reality. Research increasingly finds a connection between our vision and what products or services or systems we design. The practice of vision is a powerful tool to help bring about the specifics of a sustainable world. It is a source of clarity, inspiration and action, and a guide for prioritizing, making decisions, and keeping focused. The Proposal Team combined a personal visioning process with a global-scale visioning of The Natural Step, which helped define what perfect sustainability looks like for a project or system the participants chose. They used The Natural Step to “backcast” pathways to these visions from today’s conditions and constraints, sketching strategic plans to further each person’s personal and global visions. This helped participants determine priorities to act on. Expected outcomes were to understand the ultimate sustainability requirements for products, services, and other initiatives, and to brainstorm possible plans to get from today’s reality to the envisioned ideal.

Event Date: April 16th, 2019

Humans of Kachin

Proposal Team: Vi Nguyen

The Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand (KWAT) is a grassroot organization aimed to advocate for the rights of the Kachin ethnic minority who suffer under Myanmar military rule. While interning at KWAT, Vi launched a project called Humans of Kachin, a platform to share the stories of the Kachin people that Vi met. Since the launch of Humans of Kachin in early July, individual posts have reached between 2,000 to 13,000 people. With the increasing impact of Humans of Kachin, Vi was inspired to travel straight to the source, Myanmar, to continue this project. With funding from the Rockefeller Center, Vi visited Myitkyina, Myanmar, the capital of the Kachin state, during the 10 days of Spring break in March. Vi collected more stories and filmed a short documentary, in hopes of pushing this project forward and spreading awareness of the injustice against ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Vi then shared the project with the Dartmouth community, because by bringing awareness to the cause, we can begin to initiate change. We want a world where all people are treated equally and are understanding of each other’s unique circumstances. Let us not forget about this isolated corner of the world; we must push ourselves to learn about diverse, global issues, and ask ourselves what we can do to make a difference.

Meeting Students Where They Live

Proposal Team: Marylee Verdi (Lead) and Tong Meltzer

What is the World We Want? The world we want starts with the creative energy, positivity and kindness of one individual student and that energy radiates and spreads like a chain reaction. Health and Wellness is at the core of this potential energy. Dartmouth students are gifted, kind and fueled with a desire to effect positive change in our world; however, it is their basic health behaviors and needs that can sideline and impede their progress towards their greater goals. For Dartmouth Student Health Services and The Student Wellness, envisioning “the world we want” is meeting the students where they live – empowering the students to support positive changes with their physical and emotional health. Students arrive on campus focused on their academic goals. Navigating the college health system is typically not their primary focus. They are bombarded with information when they arrive on campus and the information given about accessing health and wellness is often lost. Integrating health and wellness education into activities of daily living is essential. This program created a collaboration with: health services, dining services, wellness, Greek life, Residence life inclusive of affinity houses and living learning communities. The minigrant assisted in kicking off a new and innovative approach to health and wellness education and service delivery. Meeting students where they live empowers students to join the conversation regarding their health and wellness. The program provided information on topics such as: sexual health, self-care, mental health counseling, and integrating holistic health and wellness into living spaces.

Event Dates: Defined by student requests

TEDxDartmouth 2019: Living Bridges

Proposal Team: Arvind Suresh (Lead), Alice Hsu, Josephine Kalshoven, and Heather Flokos

The focus of the TEDx-Dartmouth conference was the living bridges all around us. A living bridge is formed by communities guiding the pliable roots of a tree across a river or stream and allowing them to strengthen and grow over time until they can support the weight of a human being. They are the means of connectivity for societies, modern and premodern, natural and industrial, traditional and trendy. These bridges are people. A lifestyle. Making the impossible possible. They also represent the resilience and patient of pioneers and cultures that grew from a seed of an idea. Having this theme for the event allowed for a selection of speakers that celebrated ideas, innovations, and experiences that unite us as a global community and highlight how teamwork and cross-disciplinary engagement can drive positive social change in the world around us. With talk topics from disability policy change in education to stories for social change in incarceration to new perspectives on sustainability and entrepreneurship, the event focused on how each individual can act to improve the world we live in. They emphasized the importance of human collaboration and showcased creative ways on how to best challenge ourselves and better our communities.

Event Date: April 13th, 2019