GPP Student Stories – Blum Center

Student Stories

A student-arranged “Practice Experience” is the signature element of the GPP Minor, providing an opportunity for students to connect the theory and practice of poverty action. GPP Students have completed practices experiences in the Bay Area, United States, and in over 70+ countries. Check out some of their stories here!

Supporting Reproductive Health Services and Education in India

Location: Jaipur, India
PE Org: A Broader View

Anika & Anjali Kalra

Molecular & Cell Biology Students

Learning From Rural Farming Communities in Colombia

Location: San Juan de Pasto, Colombia
PE Org: Fundación Suyusama

Bori Kozek

Environmental Sciences

Working with Resettled Refugee Communities in Oakland

Location: Oakland
PE Org: Refugee Transitions

Samia Sherif

Political Science

Protecting Civil Rights for Those Impacted by the Criminal Justice System

Location: New Orleans
PE Org: Voice of the Experience

Hannah Warshawsky

Interdisciplinary Studies

Defending the Rights of Homeless Communities in the Bay Area

Location: San Francisco
PE Org: The Coalition on Homelessness

Ian Betrando

Philosophy & Legal Studies

Fostering Accessible Healthcare Services in the Bay Area

Location: Oakland
PE Org: La Clinica de la Raza

Nikita Iyer

Molecular & Cell Biology

Facilitating Art Programs for Urban Youth

Location: Quezon City, the Phillippines
PE Org: People’s Solidarity

Christian Guerrero

Social Welfare

Improving safe housing and water sanitation in slums

Location: Ahmedabad, India
PE Org: Manila Housing Trust

Pallavi Panyam

Civil Engineering

Practice Experience Blogs

Several students in the GPP Minor have documented their Practice Experiences by keeping blogs. Learn more about their experiences and insights

Diverse in Discipline and Distance, United in Ambition: Meet the New M.DevEng Cohort!

Integrating her background with her education, Andono aims to center the environment when creating architecture, from its design process, construction, and operation, to create lasting, sustainable change.

Stephany Martinez Tiffer

worked on issues of sexual and reproductive rights in Nicaragua with the organziation Centro De Mujeres Ixchen

Estrella Sainburg

worked in Chiapas, Mexico with Fundación Cántaro Azul focusing on issues with water filtration, treatment, & drinking water distribution

Elizabeth Cho

completed her practice with Uganda Development Health Associates, supporting programs for individuals with HIV/AIDS

Danielle Puretz

worked in New Orleans, LA with Young Aspirations/Young Artists, engaging youth in public awareness and social engagement through art.

Asia Tallino

worked in Senegal, Africa with Urban Farmers GIE, assisting the organization with fundraising as well as researching urban agricultural practices

Janine Myint

completed her practice experience in Mumbai, India with the Bombay Leprosy Project working to provide specialized care to those diagnosed with the disease

Brenda Hernandez

worked in the city of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India with the Bhoruka Charitable Trust’s Health of Urban Poor program.

Samantha Dizon

worked with Gawad Kalinga in the Philippines last summer on issues of women empowerment.

Chelsea Harmon

completed her practice experience with TECHO assisting with community development programs in Santiago, Chile.

Esther Chung

worked with the Uganda Village project on health care initiatives and preventative public health education.

Brenna Alexander

worked on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs as well as volunteered with an orphanage in Cambodia last summer.

Christopher Buoy

completed his practice in Cambodia last summer, working on an HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention program.

Christopher Carson

interned with Virtus (Виртус), a non-profit organization in the Ukraine to prevent the spread of HIV and aids.

Crystal Cantabrana

Completed her practice with Nest, a nonprofit microbartering and fair trade organization in Nairobi, Kenya.

GPP Photo Contest

All GPP students are encouraged to submit original photographs from their practice experience for the GPP Annual Photo Contest. Winners are voted on by GPP students, faculty and Blum staff, and are evaluated by visual content, aesthetic, and a compelling photo caption that reveals a deeper meaning to the image.

Annie Yau, Class of 16′ (Molecular & Cell Biology) – Class of Mysore, India, July 2015: Children attempt to peek in a classroom, where a rural medical camp is temporarily being held. The children did not attend school because of early morning rains, and recruitment of women for the medical camp was equally challenging as they were instructed to stay indoors by their husbands, offering a glimpse into the gender imbalance and its implications on women’s health.

Brenna Alexander, Class of 13′ (Psychology) – Phnom Penh, Cambodia Summer 2013: This woman, a client of the NGO I worked with, had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS over a decade ago. While she sustained her livelihood by weaving beautiful scarves, her illness impaired her ability to work long hours such that she struggled with financial stability. Several of her relatives had passed away from AIDS previously and she had taken to helping a friend care for her children. This woman continued to struggle with many interacting forces- illness, poverty, rural inequality, and perhaps gendered influences- which built upon each other to create new challenges everyday. Miraculously, her strength and hope lived on.

Thanh Mai Bercher, Class of 17′ (Public Health) – Nablus, Palestine, July 2016: Dar Al-Fanon Center was founded in the Askar refugee camp in response to the Intifada and growing need for community-based activities. Without access to parks and libraries, thousands of children attend the center to participate in programs. Murad’s family lives on one floor of a refugee-housing bloc and he attended the summer drama program with his siblings; he is eight and asked almost everyday to have his picture taken

Marissa Scott, Class of 17′ (Integrative Biology) – Kamuzu Central Hospital, Malawi (2016): A patient lays on a torn mattress on the floor of the hallway in Kamuzu Central Hospital. Despite the fact that it is the country’s largest hospital, the amount of admitted patients greatly exceeds the number of beds and rooms available. Consequently, less critical patients are forced to sleep, eat, and receive treatment in the crowded halls.

Angelica Teng, Class of 13′ (Molecular & Cell Biology) – In and Out – Yun Long County, Yunnan Province, China: Eugene Pretorius patiently waits to record the next heart murmur with his electronic stethoscope - fully programmed with Bluetooth technology that is able to transmit the recording to a software that can analyze and diagnose the murmur as pathological or physiological. But the curious stares of the girls outside begs us to ask the question of who is analyzing who? Cries of“Wai Guo Ren Lai Le/ Foreigners are coming!” filled the once tranquil school that sat 3000 km above sea level.

Alicia Sadowski, Class of 19′ (Environmental Sciences) – Grab It: Stax wears his Vango Vango, or patrilineal silver bracelet, as a symbol of his socioeconomic status and promising future. While the silver bracelet is small in his youth, he hopes it will grow along with his wealth as he matures. Meanwhile, having just received new notebooks and a frisbee, he and his friends want to develop their reading and sports skills.

Gabrielle Forte, Class of 12′ (Film and Sociology) – The Boy and the Steering Wheel: A seven-year-old anxious to become an adult. He showed us how he drives his taxi to work every day just like his father, in Tudor Shaft Informal Settlement in Moghale City, just south of Johannesburg City. The settlement is located on a radioactive mine dump left over from gold mining operations.

Shweta Kumar, Class of 13′ (Political Science) – A boy fetching drinking water from the only water tap at Tudor Shaft Informal Settlement. Pictured in the background are non-functioning communal toilets. Tudor Shaft is located on a toxic mine dump from former gold mines in the area.

Roxanne Rahnama, Class of 15′ (Economics) – Larinaro, Fort Dauphin, Madagascar August, 2014: A woman brushes her teeth at sunrise using water from a lake where other villagers also bath in, wash their clothing and often openly defecate in. The sun, or as the Malagasy call it, ”the eye of the sky,” gives an early morning lens into a larger urban sanitation and health crisis in Fort Dauphin.

Priscilla Liu, Class of 15′ (Economics) – In the foreground, a young boy in a migrant camp in Punjab tends water buffalo raised in the camp. Like other children in the camp, he’s kept home from school to contribute to chores like tending animals or sorting trash. Moving to the background, another boy sorts trash to be sold and a woman walks to a forested area in the camp that has ditches dug for make-shift toilets.

Andrew Chang, Class of 18′ (Molecular and Cell Biology) – In the fishmarkets of La Libertad, El Salvador, women are often tasked with the dual jobs of selling the day’s catch made by the men as well as taking care of children too young to go to school. In addition to feeding and keeping her children preoccupied, this mother gives her youngest son a bath in a bucket typically used for fish to keep him cool from the Salvadoran heat.

Fredella Surjono, Class of 14′ (Society & Environment) – Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, India (2013): A student on kitchen duty prepares rice and dhal for 1,119 of her peers before lunch. The hundreds of metal trays on the dusty concrete depict the vast number of underprivileged girls who are fighting through the rat race society. The absence of kitchen staff not only reflects the struggle of this underfunded school, but also reveals the Indian government’s economic inability to nurture its future generations.

Nicole Brand, Class of 13′ (Peace & Conflict Studies) - An indigenous Guatemalan woman embarks on the 5 km walk to her house from her cooperative’s meeting space, while balancing a basket of medicinal plants on her head.

Margaux Payton, Class of 18′ (Political Economy)

Samantha Lew, Class of 16′ (Public Health)

Margaux Payton, Class of 18′ (Political Economy)

Suraiya Luecke, Class of 17′ (Public Health) - July 2015: A Ugandan boy of no more than 3 years is responsible for repairing the water damage that eroded his one-bedroom mud-brick home during a monsoon storm. An average family size of 8 means each family has many mouths to feed and kids to raise. Thus children who can barely walk or talk are given legitimate family responsibilities and are in essence raising the next generation.