The ENGAGE team hosted a Community Engagement Showcase event on November 15, 2023, at the School of Social Work building. The event featured impactful work that students, staff, and faculty are doing in communities. Short presentations on their community engagement projects were featured. Attendees were encouraged to connect to the work and to explore ways of engaging with communities and community-based organizations in the future.
For more information about future showcases, or if you’re interested in having your work featured at future ENGAGE showcases or virtual discussions, please contact [email protected].
Event Recording
Presentations
Jenika Scott & Prince Solomon Devadass
Field Action Program
Jenika, a Master of Social Work student participating in the Global Activities Scholars Program, completed her global field placement in India, where she worked with Solomon Devadass, Associate Professor & Field Work Coordinator of Social Work at Madras Christian College. Their work was primarily focused on addressing the needs of the Irular tribal communities in the state of Tamil Nadu, India and encompassed a range of activities aimed at community intervention and development. Through comprehensive data collection efforts, they developed a support framework tailored to the unique challenges and perspectives of the Irular tribes.
Stephanie Acosta
Virtual Case Management for Refugees
Stephanie, a Master of Social Work student, has been working with the International Rescue Committee to provide virtual case management for refugees who reside more than 100 miles outside of local resettlement office sites in the United States. Through a strengths-based approach, they work on ongoing case management to reach the goal of self-sufficiency. Common services include economic empowerment to support clients with public benefits, initial health screenings, job readiness training, cultural orientation, and assisting clients in securing permanent housing.
Niki Williams
Detroiter
Niki is a photographer who works as the School of Social Work’s Multimedia Designer. Detroiter is an ongoing photographic portrait project he is creating in the streets of Detroit. Each image in the project is created in a choreographed collaboration with people he meets while bicycling through the streets of the city. He is working within the tradition of street/documentary photography and shares his images with his collaborators. Through this work, Niki has collected many stories about contemporary life in Detroit that he wishes to share with a broader audience.
Gizem Kestly
Peer-to-Peer
Gizem is a Master of Social Work student who serves as the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Program Lead & Vice President at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Washtenaw. NAMI’s P2P program provides any adult who lives with a mental health condition the opportunity to participate in an 8 week long mental health educational course. This course involves information sharing, discussions, and interactive exercises that encourage growth and sharing in a supportive, confidential environment. Their goal is to impart the message that there is hope for everyone living with a mental health condition.
Tabatha Reynolds & Kathleen Clancey
SummerWorks
Tabatha, a Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health student, and Kathleen both work on the SummerWorks program as a success coach and as the MichiganWorks! Embedded SummerWorks Program Manager, respectively. This project services youth in Washtenaw County by facilitating a 13-week professional development curriculum and providing a paid 10-week internship and a mentorship match. The program impacts the community's economic and workforce development through providing dozens of internships in the local community and providing funding for employers who wish to engage in the program but do not have the funds to pay the interns.
Reyhaneh Najafi Koupaei
Iranian House of Shahre-Rey
Reyhaneh is a Master of Social Work and Master of Laws student who served as a teacher and financial manager for the Iranian House of Shahre-Rey, a wholly volunteer-driven organization based in Tehran, Iran and made up of undergraduate and graduate students. The organization serves child laborers and single mothers from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran and provides financial, legal, and healthcare services. Its work helps keep children in schools, prepare them for higher education, and limit their exposure to drugs and substances. It also provides them and single mothers with access to healthier food, safe shelter, and mental and physical health services and works to decrease child and domestic abuse and help mothers secure better employment options.
Rich Tolman, Sam Donald & Nazim Fakir
The Papa Was Project
Rich Tolman, Sheldon D. Rose Collegiate Professor of Social Work, co-developed The Papa Was Project in partnership with Sam Donald, Detroit Musix; Nazim Fakir, The Fakir Group; Marcus Hillie, Parent Think Tank; Angela Peavy, Genesis PRC; Willis Peavy, Counsel of Dads; Michael Aaron, Jr., Un1te; and Feodies Shipp III, U-M Detroit Center. This project is a Detroit-based partnership that uses the arts and popular culture to engage fathers and promote positive narratives about Detroit fathers.
Clancy Loebl
Tehila Zambia: Prevent Team Community Focus Group Discussions
Clancy, a Master of Social Work student participating in the Global Activities Scholars Program, completed her global field placement in Zambia, where she worked with Tehila Zambia, a child safeguarding nonprofit based in Lusaka. Clancy worked on community focus group discussions that helped Tehila better understand the impact of a child abuse prevention training they provide to various community organizations. These focus groups allowed them to better understand how past trainees implemented the knowledge from the program into their communities as well as how adults and children in the community perceive existing risks to children and how they can be combated.
Kevin Nguyen
Ann Arbor City Council Community Engagement and Improvement Work
Kevin is a Master of Social Work student completing his field placement with the Office of Ann Arbor City Council Member Ayesha Ghazi Edwin. As part of his placement, he conducts community outreach through social media and email and research to inform policy debate and voting, policy proposals, and council initiatives. A recent project Kevin worked on was drafting a resolution focused on advancing disability justice in the state. This resolution was approved upon proposal and was the first-ever municipal resolution of its kind in the state of Michigan.
Camille Quinn & Kyra Smith
It's Not Just Me! Black Young Adults' Views of What it Takes to Live on the Right Side of the Law: An Intersectional-CBPR Study
Camille Quinn, Associate Professor of Social Work, leads an intersectional community-based participatory research project focusing on policing and mass incarceration targeting African American young adults in Detroit and Michigan. Collaborating with co-principal investigator Michael Kloc and community partners Rai Lanier and Nicholas Buckingham from Michigan Liberation (ML), their team, which also includes graduate students and ML organizers, is establishing a young adult advisory board and planning a project launch event this fall. The initiative involves conducting three community conversations and widely disseminating the findings to support future funding and advocacy efforts, contribute to dismantling oppressive systems, and enhance the well-being of communities affected by the prison industrial complex.
Irene Routté & Espoir Murondanyi
Transportation and Mobility Safety and Equity for Refugee and Immigrant Communities
Irene, a PhD in Social Work and Anthropology student, has been collaborating with Espoir, the president of the Michigan Banyamulenge Community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to launch the Michigan Transportation Center for Immigrants and Refugees. This is a refugee-led non-profit that delivers safe, reliable, and language/culturally specific transportation services to recent refugees and immigrants that enable them to access employment, medical care, and other services as well as driver instruction and testing in the client’s native language. In addition to meeting an essential need for a particular community, this organization provides a framework for community based public transport that can assist in reducing transportation poverty and increasing safety and economic mobility.
Zihui Adams
Brightmoor Up from the Infant Out
Zihui is a Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health student who is completing her field placement with the School of Social Work’s (SSW) ENGAGE initiative. During her field placement, the ENGAGE team was contracted by the Brightmoor Alliance (BA) to co-design the Brightmoor Up from the Infant Out program. This community-based program seeks to shift the culture in the community towards a mutual aid mindset where community members work together to support children, promote family wellbeing, and advocate for policies that meet the needs of families. To learn more about the BA and the Brightmoor Up from the Infant Out program, click here to watch a video co-created by the SSW and the BA.
Jamie Mitchell
Recruiting and Retaining Older African Americans into Research
Jamie Mitchell, Associate Professor of Social Work, has been working with the Flint Healthier Black Elders Community Advisory Board (CAB) to encourage Black older adults to participate in ethical research. They have developed a NIH-funded website to inform and connect community and academic research stakeholders and utilized a community-based participatory research process to provide feedback on website content and select dynamic visual representations of healthy Black aging. They also strategized a marketing plan and helped develop two videos featuring trustworthy and factual messaging on research participation. This community-driven process of developing and disseminating content on inclusive research participation serves as a model for efforts to increase research representation across the nation.
Photos From the Event
