Youth Changemakers Taking Action to Support Black Lives

Welcome! This is the second in a series of newsletters LearnServe is publishing to amplify the changemaking of our student social entrepreneurs and alumni working to combat anti-Blackness specifically. You can keep up with the series on our website here.

LearnServe students and alumni have pursued this work in many forms ‒ from taking action against police violence, mass incarceration, and racial discrimination to fighting for and celebrating Black representation and creative expression. We're excited to introduce you to these changemakers and their impact!

Jayme': Justice Community Equity Peace

When she joined the LearnServe Fellows Program in 2018, Jayme' Mims had a plan to tackle food insecurity in her neighborhood in Washington, DC's Ward 8. But when she shared her ideas for a food drive with her neighbors, they raised concerns. Police violence and other gun violence made it safer to stay indoors as much as possible.

Looking at these connected, overlapping injustices, Jayme' decided to change her plans. She launched JCEP (Justice Community Equity Peace) to give her friends and peers a safe platform to share their experiences and perspectives with police officers.

Watch this interview with Jayme' from 2018, where she shares her story in founding JCEP as a LearnServe Fellow, her experiences in Paraguay with LearnServe Abroad, and how the two are linked.

Jayme' is now a rising Sophomore at Hood College and an intern with LearnServe's new virtual Summer Global Fellowship. She shared with us last week where she plans to take her social change work next. Read the conversation on the LearnServe Blog.

Nedim: Informing and Empowering Youth Travelers

“Imagine returning home from your very first trip abroad without your family. You had a great time but you’re excited to get home. Just as you are going through customs, you are stopped and separated from your group and forced to wait in a room for hours on end with no connection to the outside world—all because of your name. That was me."

Returning to the LearnServe Fellows program, Nedim Yusuf was determined to make sure that no other traveler would experience what he did. His social venture, The Marginalized Experience gives student travelers access to an ever-evolving guide of resources for situations when going through U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Read the rest of Nedim’s powerful and thought-provoking essay, published in The Renewal Project last week here.

Romeo: Striving for Equity in Education

"At the [public charter] school I currently attend I don’t get the education every child deserves," reflected Romeo in his social venture proposal last spring. "I spend most of my days completing worksheets that don’t demand critical thinking, and I'm frustrated by the low standards schools uphold its students to."

These disparities became particularly apparent to Romeo when he joined LearnServe and heard peers from other schools talking about AP classes, travel opportunities, and student clubs. "I began to realize that I wasn’t being offered the many opportunities other students were being offered," concluded Romeo. As a LearnServe Fellow in 2019 he pitched Quality Education for All.

"Through my venture I wanted to address the fact that students in high poverty and high minority areas are being disproportionately taught by first year or out of field teachers" Romeo shared. "I wanted to show that people of color even face inequality when it comes to education."

Romeo's focus on education equity continued during his first year at Wooster College. The Wooster Voice recently covered his experience participating in a unique course that has been taught each year since 2005.

"At Wooster College, the 'prison course' refers to professor Anne Nurse’s Deviance and Criminology course that aims to bridge the gap between the 'inside' and the 'outside.' Offered each spring, Deviance and Criminology is a sociology course hosted at the Indian River Juvenile Correctional Facility, roughly half an hour away from Wooster. The class is comprised of both 'outside' students from the College and 'inside' students who currently reside at the facility.

Deviance and Criminology in part allows the 'outside' students to witness the criminal justice system from within, challenging biases and preconceived notions about those confined. According to Romeo Philippe ’23, 'the ‘inside students’ … are no different from any other [people] I’ve ever met. They have the same dreams and aspirations as the rest of us.' As he continued, 'Seeing those students in a juvenile detention center shows me how our society ultimately failed these students and did not provide the opportunities or resources for them to achieve their dreams,' he said."

As an intern with LearnServe's new Summer Global Fellowship ‒ a virtual exchange between students in Lusaka, Zambia and Washington DC, Romeo is grappling with education equity in a new context: how do the lessons he learned in 2019 as a participant with LearnServe Abroad in Zambia translate into a virtual environment? Read his thoughts on the LearnServe Blog.