The 2001 Kirkland Project service associates for Summer 2001are Rebecca Karb '02, Ashland, MA , and Julie Loder '02, San Francisco, CA . Karb will will intern with US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), and Loder will intern with People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER) in San Francisco, CA. Service associates engage in unpaid socially useful work over a 10-week period in the summer and receive a stipend of $3000 from the Kirkland Project, with matching funds from the Kirkland Endowment, as support for this work.
Rebecca's work with US PIRG will focus on her areas of interest: public health and public policy. In her application to the associates program Rebecca wrote, "I am interested in public health and hope to receive a joint masters degree in public health and public policy when I graduate from Hamilton. Specifically, I am concerned with minority and women's health issues."
Julie's internship with PODER is important to her because of the work the organization is doing in her hometown. According to her application, San Francisco's neighborhoods are changing as a result of gentrification. She writes, "The Mission District of San Francisco has been hit particularly hard. . . . the Mission is a neighborhood in the truest sense. Since this process of gentrification began several years ago, not only have real people/families lost their homes, the entire neighborhood is being sacrificed to the economic interests of business. . . . [PODER] is one of several organizations that has come about in order to defend the community against this very issue."
Application to the service associate program is available to any enrolled Hamilton student who will be continuing his or her studies as a Hamilton student in the term following the associateship. The awards will be made on the basis of need as well as the contribution that the proposed work will make to social justice. The next application deadline, for awards in the summer of 2002, will be in January 2002. For more information about the program, please contact Robin Vanderwall in the Kirkland Project office.
