Cal Corps - Magnolia Project Newsletter

Newsletter, 2012

Contents 2

MP Expands: Memorial Day Kid’s Silent Auction Donations A Safe Haven: Mr. Johnson’s Farm 3

MP Expands: Abbeville 4

The Magnolia Project This year marks the sixth summer of a tenyear commitment to working in solidarity with Gulf Coast communities.

In 2006, UC Berkeley began its work, partnering with community-based organizations with a multiyear commitment to work together. Formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, The Magnolia Project is a student social justice organization created in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Cal Corps Public Service Center.

The Magnolia Project seeks dedicated student volunteers who are not afraid to get dirty and challenge their own assumptions about a just rebuilding process in the Gulf Coast. The program offers a 3 week Summer Service Trip, an 8 week Summer Internship Program, and a Semester long exchange with the University of New Orleans.

Experiencing Culture Through Service Continuing Work in the Gulf Coast 5

The Future of MP 6

Supporting Magnolia Project “Part of the thing I want you guys to think about is a plan.

How we could, after a disaster, make communities whole again”

publicservice.berkeley.edu/magnoliaproject

Ward “Mack McClendon” Magnolia Project YouTube Video

Newsletter, 2012

MP Expands: Memorial Day Weekend Kid’s Camp

MP SILENT AUCTION

By: Kiyanna Grimes Student Co-director I joined Magnolia Project with hopes of gaining community service experience.

However, I have gained more than experience—I have also gained passion. I realized service did not necessarily mean work, but it could also mean passion. I started off as a participant, returned as a board member, and returned again as a director. This year I have also extended my leadership and added a new component to the service trip. In the fall semester of 2011, I enrolled in a course in the Peace and Conflict Studies department because it offered me the opportunity to create a project and apply for a grant to make it happen. The Shinnyo-en Peacebuilding Leadership Program was kind enough to offer me the grant to host a Kids Camp in New Orleans.

This grant has given me the opportunity to expand Magnolia Project. The project follows the vision of Magnolia Project for the next five years as we move towards a more sustainable long-term service project in New Orleans. We have to empower the children in New Orleans so they can be

Send in kind donations for our annual silent auction!!!

Jewelry, paintings, memorabilia…etc!

For questions email: magnolia.katrina@gmail.com Items should be submitted by Monday, April 2nd, 2012

confident enough to lead other children in the right direction. The skills are there in the rich culture of New Orleans—we just want to show children how intelligent, useful, and powerful they are in their community.

Continuing our vision of long-term sustainable service, service participants and interns will collaborate with already existing organizations in New Orleans. We are creating a weekend summer camp for youth in the Lower Ninth Ward to teach them selfsufficiency and self-empowerment through workshops, field trips, and sustainable agriculture. The project will take place May 26-May 28, 2012, at the Lower Ninth Ward Village. Community partners have been invited to host workshops for the youth.

A Safe Haven: Mr. Johnson’s Farm By: Yasmine Tager Service Participant

Mr. Johnson's farm, otherwise known as the Lower Ninth Ward Village kids' second home, mirrors but also enables Mr. Mac's goals and dreams concerning the children. Fields of okra, ponies and horses, cooking, and just getting away—that's all it takes to make somebody feel at home – that, and good company. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Mac provided just that for us, and strive to 2

Okra from Mr. Johnson’s farm

Newsletter, 2012 A Safe Haven: Mr. Johnson’s Farm Cont.

offer such a peaceful and enriching experience to the children as often as time, money, and parents permit it.

A single ride up to the farm sufficed to show me how little it takes to make a difference in a child's life. While working on the fields gives children a sense of agency, riding horses offers them a rare worry-free, youthful experience, and talking and laughing enables them to build relationships in an environment where hostility does not have a place. To not only witness all of this growth, but also be an active part of it gave me a better sense of what the children of the Lower Ninth Ward Village want and need: a

haven—a safe space where we can all act our age, and not feel the weight of the every day struggle. It is at the farm that a child refused to talk to me about his fight with his sister three times, and then finally opened up to me. It is at the farm that a child taught me how to eat the head of a shrimp, and that another encouraged me to ride a horse. It is at the farm that the children feel empowered enough to teach themselves and others; it is at the farm that I am humbled and able to truly engage with the simplicity of the landscape, and the complexity of the people around me.

Magnolia Project Expands: Abbeville By: Rosa Ortega Service Participant Abbeville was a very unique experience for me. All the other participants on my team volunteered to go to Abbeville, I had not. However, after my experiences there I would definitely choose to return. Initially for me, Abbeville provided a good comparison to New Orleans. It provided a different way for me to assess need. While Abbeville was not impacted by Hurricane Katrina the same way that New Orleans was, it was impacted nonetheless. As the week progressed I began to enjoy my service there more. Our team began to meet more people and learn more about the community. For our trip, my team helped renovate an old school so that it could be used as a summer food program to provide free lunches to children who would otherwise have less healthy options. Over the course of the week, we met community leaders very dedicated to the lunch program and very dedicated to the community. But it seemed to me as though these community members were receiving little aid besides each other. It was clear that there was need there and it was clear 3

that community members were very grateful for our presence. They told us places to visit, places to eat, and even had a potluck for us one day. They provided a sense of community I had not seen in New Orleans, but that I imagine would have been similar to the community presence in New Orleans before the storm. At the end of our stay in Abbeville a health inspector came to see if the building would be safe enough to house the summer lunch program, and it was! My stay in Abbeville was very rewarding, even though at first I was skeptical. It provided a contrast to the service work I had previously done in New Orleans and it also gave me a new way to assess need in my own community. Abbeville was a wonderful opportunity to do service on the Gulf Coast and an experience that continues to impact the service work I do today.

Newsletter, 2012

Experiencing Culture Through Service By: Mansher Dhillon OPEN Intern !

!

My time in New Orleans, interning for the Orleans Public Education Network, had indeed been an awe-inspiring and enlightening experience. It allowed me to become acquainted more intimately with the African American experience and its accompanying joys and sorrows as reflected in its public school system, through my resultant interactions with my co-workers and community members.

I’d like to think I took full advantage of the opportunity to explore and discover myself in a completely new environment for two months in the summer, indulging myself with all the cultural essentials that New Orleans has to offer at every street corner, from its

Mansher glances out the window in New Orleans

exotic Creole cuisine to its vibrant and energetic jazz music. It was truly a privilege to serve as a Magnolia Project Intern and I’m sure future interns interested in the project will be anything but disappointed by their experience.

Continuing Work in the Gulf Coast By: Eddi Zepeda Board Member

It’s been more than six years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged through the Gulf of Mexico and flooded over eighty percent of the city of New Orleans, yet one can still hear the cries of the wounded and displaced far beyond the physical boundaries of “The City that Care Forgot.” I traveled to New Orleans with The Magnolia Project for the first time during the summer of 2010. I was one of more than thirty students from U.C. Berkeley eager to join the ongoing rebuilding efforts of the last five years.

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I bridged theory and reality in New Orleans during my visits with The Magnolia Project, and I learned to differentiate much more than the textbook definitions for sympathy and empathy, and charity and service. Much more than a passing indulgence, my work with the Magnolia Project as both a member and leader furthered my interest in social advocacy and allowed me to challenge conventional forms of participatory methods in social design

Newsletter, 2012 Continuing Work in the Gulf Coast Cont.

through hands-on experience. I am an aspiring urban planner and a committed scholar fascinated with the discourse between society and the built environment. I am now in New Orleans completing a year of AmeriCorps service as a House Captain for a nonprofit called Rebuilding Together. I have the opportunity to continue learning about the issues affecting New Orleans while putting my education into practice. I plan to immerse myself in a different form of education through the nonprofit world before continuing

McClendon “Mack” Ward shows his map of displaced residents of the Lower Ninth Ward

The Future of Magnolia Project By: Angela Taylor MP Advisor

Dear Magnolia Project Friends, 2011-2012 marks our sixth year of serving the Gulf Coast. At the halfway point of our ten-year commitment, we remain committed to serving the community through service, internships and semester exchange. This is a pivotal time for the program as well as an opportunity to reenergize this commitment with the support of alumni/past participants, leaders, and the Community Advisory Group. As a Director team, over the fall, we reflected on where we’ve been and where we are going for the next five years. We remain driven by our value of solidarity seeking to align this value through our practices in

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addition to considering the realties on the ground in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. Selfsufficiency and empowerment of the gulf coast community is at the heart of how we envision Magnolia Project engaging the Gulf Coast over the next five years.

Additionally, building a healthy community amongst the participants, connecting course work at Cal to their service in Louisiana and in their own local community will be essential to deepening the quality of the program.

Support MP!!

A donation of …

-> $20 will pay for one night in New Orleans for one student

-> $56 will pay for one

participants for 8 days in New Orleans

-> $160 will pay for one roundtrip train ticket

Make checks payable to: “UC Regents” “Magnolia Project” in memo line **Online Donations preferred** Link: Give to Magnolia Project

The Magnolia Project 102 Sproul #2430

Berkeley, CA 94720

Newsletter, 2012

Magnolia Project’s 2011-2012 Leadership Team

Angela Taylor Cal Corps Internship Programs Coordinator Rebecca Fisher-McGinty Education and Communications Director Kiyanna Grimes Finance Director Stephanie Ullrich Community Partnerships Director

Emily Green Finance Board Member Rosa Ortega Education and Communications Board Member Stina Montanez Community Partnerships Board Member

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Supporting Magnolia Project To donate online, please use this Give To Cal link below:

Give to Magnolia Project

We are pleased to announce the continuation of the Magnolia Project’s Alumni Donation Drive for a second year! Because we are a student-initiated organization, we need your support to achieve our mission of “Education, Service and Advocacy.” While our resource team has been diligently working to pursue every funding opportunity our most important resource has been the generosity of our people like you.

Currently, the University is matching all donations made by Berkeley Alumni Classes 07-12, so every dollar really does count. While the actual cost of the trip is $975 per person, each participant is only responsible for a $750 subsidized fee; all funding donated to Magnolia Project goes toward subsidizing the three-week volunteer trip fee for students who would otherwise be unable to participate, as well as providing stipends to our summer interns.

If you are interested in making a donation, we are a sponsored student group with the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), which is a non-profit organization, IRS Code 501(c)(3). All donations are entirely tax-deductible.

Getting in Touch with The Magnolia Project Mailing Address: 102 Sproul #2430 Berkeley, CA 94720-2430 Director Email: magnolia.katrina@gmail.com Staff Email: taylora@berkeley.edu Find us online: publicservice.berkeley.edu

publicservice.berkeley.edu/magnoliaproject