EdunLIVE on Campus

I interviewed the co-president of EdunLIVE. This is a fairly new organization on campus but I thought it'd be a great group to interview because of their similarity to what we're trying to do. Basically, EdunLIVE sells T-shirts to student groups on campus. These T-shirts are completely made in Africa, everything from the actual making of the shirt (fair-trade) to the color printing on the shirts. By student groups purchasing these shirts, they are essentially giving money to the people who make these shirts: kids on the street. EdunLIVE gives job opportunities to kids on the street so they're doing something productive and able to make money for survival. Although Africa has much more dire conditions than we do here in Somerville, this is a good concept that could be implemented in our project to stimulate the economic recovery of Somerville. EdunLIVE said they would be interested in applying this same concept to the area od Somerville. Infact, they were working with a screen-printer in Somerville who was giving kids on the street jobs to work at his place. However due to the economic conditions he had to shut his shop and relocate. Also, since the organization is very new to campus, it only has about 3-4 members (mostly the founding members). Although this is small, this type of organization doesn't seem to require a lot of members because they are pretty much the middle-men that receive orders and get them made. Maybe if we wanted to ask this organization to continue this idea in Somerville, they could get some extra people to take care of this area.

All in all, I think this would be a great organization/idea to utilize in Somerville to help economic recovery.

Tisch Scholars

The Tisch Citizenship and Public Service Scholars are a group of selected Tufts students who work to encourage community building, forge relationships with our community based on service, educate others on the importance of active citizenship, and incorporate public service into our lifestyle. All Scholars have a project that engages one of Tufts four host communities of Somerville, Medford, Mystic, and/or Chinatown. Before becoming a scholar, students must take and pass a class through the Tisch College called Education for Active CItizenship.

They are doing a range of work in Somerville currently. This includes everything from after school tutoring at local high schools, budgeting and tax advice to immigrant communities, and examining and solving environmental issues throughout the city. The goal is to look for different non profits or NGOs who need a little extra help in achieving their mission, and give them a Scholar is passionate about the same type of work.

The impact made is goal based. Every scholar is not only looking to develop leadership, time management, and collaborative skills, but are also looking to enact real change in the community. The outcomes are always looked at educating groups of people and/or directly servicing and volunteering sects of individuals. In addition, the Scholar program looks to strengthen the bond and relationships between Tufts and the communities that are directly impacted by Tufts. This is the issue we just spoke about, whether we feel that we are part of the Somerville community or not. I know from my experience in this program I have developed a much stronger affection and bond with Somerville than almost all of my other friends.

Currently there about 50 total scholars in the program. At then end of every fall semester, recruitment begins for the next class. You must be either a freshman or sophomore who is not going abroad to apply, as it is at least a three year commitment. There is a formal application and interview process, and if allowed in to the program, a student must pass the E4AC class to become a Scholar.

This is a great model for other organizations to follow in the way that community relationships have been built and maintained throughout the years.

bugs and issues with the map

Please reply with any problems you have using the map or suggestions for changing it. These are issues I'm aware of:

• nodes overlap; they should be spaced so that all are legible
• when you enter an email address in the "email" field, it doesn't save
• no one was able to add more than one link to the same node; we need to check to make sure that's possible
  
• "Tufts University" first appears on the list of nodes to which other nodes can be linked, but it disappears sometimes. Not sure why.
  
• there should be a space to enter a URL for an organization
• we like the idea of colored circles--different colors for organizations, issues, and people

CORES

I talked with Gabrielle Green who is the contact person for Teaching in CORES, which is a group on campus which provides English language and citizenship classes to immigrants at the Committee for Refugees from El Salvadore (CORES) community in Somerville. CORES is associated with the Institute for Global Leadership here at Tufts. Gabrielle had to delay our actual conversation due to other commitments, but I am very interested to learn how this group interacts with the Somerville community, within the El Salvadorian community and beyond. I know that when my brother was at Tufts (A09) he worked with CORES, and was very active in Somerville, and with his students. He worked outside of the classes and formal instruction to help people get jobs, interview skills, and other necessary tools for being an engaged part of the community and economic cycle. I await a more detailed conversation with Gabrielle, so that I can obtain more than anecdotal information. I will add my CORES node under the 'education' tag, but it will be incomplete... I will update it as soon as I make further contact with Gabrielle.

Tufts Economics Society

I interviewed an E-Board member from the Tufts Economics Society and found that they could really be a potential. The member was talking about how they had talks of starting a Financial Literacy Program a couple years ago but were never really able to get it off the ground. This year, they've divided the group up into different categories and one of them is titled "Community Service/Outreach." This year they are thinking of working with The Boys and Girls Club of Middlesex County to teach the middle-schoolers about financial concepts like saving and creating budgets. They were also talking about working with a woman from the "Tisch College of Financial Literacy" (if such a thing exists-unsure). All these things that the Ec Society is working on are things that we talked about in class last time (in particlar the financial literacy programs). Therefore, I see the Economics Society as being a great potential!

Junior Achievement

I had originally planned on adding a group called ASAP to the map, but upon realizing that they work solely in Medford I switched another LCS group called Junior Achievement. Junior Achievement is a club that organizes Tufts students to volunteer at local schools teaching basic business and math principals to children in grades K-6. While the group insists that no prior knowledge of economics or business is necessary to teach the children, a large portion of the group is made up of economics majors.

While I am not currently involved in the organization, I am an economics major, and researching Junior Achievement really got me thinking about how the skills of the group members could be put to even better use. These are students who generally have a background in economic principles, enjoy teaching, and have a desire to volunteer in the community. While educating the next generation is extremely important, perhaps in these troubling economic times we should be offering this kind of support to the adult members of the community, too.

Last year, during the height of the economic crisis, the Tufts Economics Department held a symposium led by professors who explained what brought on the economic crisis in the United States and gave students a better understanding of the economic background behind everything they were hearing in the news. I think that this kind of education would be of great value to the Somerville community and I plan to propose it to the organizers of Junior Achievement. The talk could be lead by Junior Achievement members and even feature portions on what the economic crisis means to Somerville, and where we can go from here. Maybe this networking map could help facilitate this kind of event.

Tufts Democrats

I added Tufts Democrats as a node to the map. They have a strong connection to Somerville, especially in local politics. They played an active role in re-electing Carl Sciortino as a state representative, and were very successful with the write-in campaign that was run.

They are also very active in registering students to vote on campus, with many of them registering as Somerville residents.

They view the economic crisis in Somerville in political terms -- local government cost-cutting measures affect a lot of social services in the area.

Overall, I think Tufts Democrats is tangentially involved in the economic recovery in Somerville. Their ties to the local government and state representatives are strong, and the government plays a vital role in determining the budgets and cost-cutting in the area.

Services or Potential?

I just added the All-Stars group and tagged them as both 'Services' and 'Potential'. Based on what we talked about last week, I guess that seems kind of conflicting, but I wasn't quite sure which tag was a better fit for the group. Essentially, they are a group (under the Leonard Carmichael Society) of about 20 volunteers who go once a week to play with the kids at after-school programs at Somerville elementary schools. These after-school programs are cheaper than private after-school care, as they are sponsored by the government, and therefore All Stars' participation in them does provide a service to the Somerville community in this tough economic time. However, I don't think that All Stars is in any way necessary for these programs to continue. If they stopped participating, the service would still be there for the Somerville families. So that's why I also tagged All Stars as potential. They are a great group and obviously have an interest in continuing to help the community, so I feel that they could be tapped into for another project or something. I'm still not sure...thoughts?

Potential

Today while interviewing a member of Trunk in order to add their node to the social network map, I caught a little glimpse of how useful this social network map could be. He explained to me how Trunk put on free shows at area schools and how they were always looking for more schools to partner with. I then explained to him how the goal of the website was to connect people and organizations. He was really excited by this potential for Trunk to connect with more schools and now I am really excited by the website's potential to connect organizations like Trunk with organizations who want their services.

The Roosevelt Institute

I've added The Roosevelt Institute to the map. This is a national organization that has just been established by two Sophomore students, Sigourney and Julie, this year at Tufts. In essence, it is a student policy organization that engages college students in a unique form of progressive activism that empowers young people as leaders and promotes their ideas for change. They are really trying to establish this stronger sense of a having a think-tank at Tufts that the students can participate actively in.

When asked, they expressed a great amount of interest in doing work within Somerville. In fact, that's the first place they wanted to start with a lot of their work. Julie expressed the fact that their organization really wants to tap into the networks already established through both Tufts in generally, and more specifically Tisch College. They hope that achieving this goal will allow them to get students working in the community right from the get-go. Now, ideally they would like to get students involved in public policy internships/jobs, where their main dealings would be with research and proposals regarding the most pressing issues facing Somerville. The ideal sites they're looking for to work with are all places that help to institute change, such as non-profits, NGOs, and local government officials. The latter is what they expressed the highest interest level about starting with. They seemed to really express that their ultimate goal for the students participating would be for them to gain the knowledge, confidence, and power of affecting real change in American politics.

With the above stated, they said they want to make a substantive, public policy focused impact in everything they do. They are hoping to have actual, tangible changes made in laws, resolutions, and initiatives from both the government and the community. Also, they would like to empower students to become the leaders that enact this change and spearhead the efforts.

Currently, the group has the two main founders and a few members that have said they really are excited to work with the Institute. They are actively searching out more students though, and have had some success. Julie also has been reaching out to network through Tufts, specifically to Tisch College and The Institute of Political Citizenship. Regarding the community, they are still exploring possible organizations they could go out and talk with.

Specifically regarding the economic recovery in Somerville, they seemed to fairly educated about it. They said they understood it was obviously a huge issue facing the community, especially in issues of housing and jobs. They added they thought this was especially bad for immigrants throughout Somerville as they have less resources than most. Through their organization though, they are hoping to explore these facts in order to come up with possible policy options to improve these situations.