The Program

Umoja exists beyond Palomar. It’s a statewide community represented by over 70 community colleges, which seeks to promote cultural awareness and enhance the experience of college students.According to San Diego City College, the first Umoja program was established in 1988 at Chabot College in Hayward, CA, and was known then as the Daraja Project. “Daraja” is Swahili for bridge.

“The point of the program is to build student confidence so they feel like they can advocate for themselves,” said Carr, “we need students to come up and say ‘yeah, I’m not learning this way.And I need you to really do something like, if you’re going to try to teach me I need you to make some corrections. To meet me where I’m at.And that takes a lot of cojones, right?”

Since 1988, several colleges have developed similar programs designed to supportAfricanAmerican students. In 2007, all of the separate programs unified into one large UMOJAcommunity.

Aside from regular meetings and porch talks, the club also engages in various community service, career-building, and networking activities, such as blood drives and beach cleanups. They recently partnered with Mesa Rim Climbing Gym in San Marcos to host “Black Climb Nights: Climbing for Unity,” which will be a free monthly community event for anyone to get together and connect.

Chauntrell “Chanti” Turner, the club’s council representative, explained that the event will be open not only to Palomar students but students from other campuses as well as anyone who wants to be involved. “We just want to essentially let [students] know that even though you’re not going to be here next semester or you’re transferring that you're still in this community... and that’s going to be our way to catch up with them and meet up with them if anything after they graduate,” she said.

The club also participated in Palomar's 2023 Black Student Success Week, a series of skill shops and presentations to help students thrive. Turner, who is studyingArt Media Design in hopes of becoming an art therapist, hosted a workshop on the benefits of art therapy. She explained that “it’s a way to convey what you have gone through but without actually talking about it. That’s really important to somebody who has PTSD, or CPTSD or, you know, some other kind of disorder, and why it’s important.”

The workshop also featured an interactive exercise, “creating your own emotional monster,” where students choose an emotion from a provided selection and portray it in a drawing, which Turner then analyzes. She says that students are often shocked by how accurately she’s able to asses their feelings from the drawing alone.

On a broader scale, Umoja hosts its annual conference along with several seasonal events for Umoja programs across the regions to network with one another. “This is a chance for students to get together and talk about pressing issues, and how we can make our program better,” said Carr.

This spring, some Umoja students at Palomar got to attend the 2023 Regional Symposia, held at Orange Coast College, which featured workshops and career-planing exercises.

Members of the Umoja club recognize the importance of celebrating and supporting one another. Villagomez, who is in her second semester at Palomar, shared that being a part of the Umoja club has helped her persevere through her classes. “I’m really happy that I'm here and I found my community,” she said.

Russel doesn’t feel a strong sense of community on campus outside of the Umoja club. “But I think that's just part of being a community college,” he added. “Honestly, everybody’s trying to just get to where they got to be, to get up outta here as fast as possible. I think when you really take your education seriously, it takes a certain level of maturity to be like, ‘Let me go find a community,’ because it’s hard doing this alone.”