Our Wonderful Community Action & Social Change Graduates
D’Angelo Paillet (Business ’19, CASC Minor; Social Services Program Manager for CalFresh in Marin) became inspired by to explore service- learning from one of his classmates in the Adult Degree Completion program. He heard them talking about how rewarding their service learning course was, and they recommended that he look into to it. Shortly after that he saw the flyer for the CASC minor. When he read what the minor was about, he thought that it would be a good compliment to his management degree. In addition, professionally he works in the field of social services so it just seemed like it would be a perfect fit for him to add the minor.
Although his major was in business, he also wanted to be able to impact change within the communities that he works for and lives in. The minor allowed him the opportunity to have that deeper dive into the community to understand the issues that different people and organizations are faced with. The service learning has allowed him to take things that he has learned throughout the various semester and apply them to his professional career.
D’Angelo is passionate about addressing the issue of food insecurity within communities of color. One of his most memorable moments came after serving with his community partner that held a weekly food pantry. He would go weekly and help them set up and placed the food on display for the visitors to the pantry. After the semester was over, he ran into one of the regular visitors while he was out in the community. The pantry visitor came up to him to say hello; she remembered him from being at the pantry. She then began to tell him how important the pantry was to her, and how much it also help her financially. She talked about how being able to access the pantry allowed her to grab fruit, vegetables and other items for her household. She believed that the pantry was probably saving her over $50 a week that she was able to use towards her other household needs. It was really cool to hear first hand from someone who was accessing this community resource and to hear about how the service, that he had the privilege to be a part of through the minor, was helping them.
For most of his first three years at Dominican, Nhan Pham (Business ’19, CASC Minor) had no idea that he would rediscover his own culture in the local San Rafael community. As a CASC minor, he had a wide understanding of the context of the Canal community through working with Canal Alliance adult ESL program and Marin Community Clinic’s Health Hubs. Finally, in his senior year, he participated in a pilot program that aimed to increase the social interactions of Vietnamese elders in the Canal. Since Nhan was fluent in Vietnamese, he was in a unique role to interpret for the elders who spoke little or no English at all.
Before coming to the Vietnamese senior group, he assumed that they would be similar to his own family. However, he learned that he was different from the elders in terms of socioeconomic status, education level, class differences, and most importantly, by age. Those differences made him an outsider to the seniors in the beginning. Soon enough, though, the seniors started to warm-up to him because he shared the same values and especially same language as them. In the end, he learned a lot more about his culture, the Vietnam war, and the social isolation that the elders experience in the Marin community.
Inspired by his community engagement efforts from San Rafael to Cincinnati, and with support from faculty, staff, and classmates, Dylan Martins (Biology ’19, CASC Minor) successfully applied to the Peace Corps.
Later this year he will begin serving as a Health Educator in the Republic of Moldova in Eastern Europe. Dylan feels very lucky to be part of the select group of applicants chosen to serve in this desirable location. Yet, it’s much more than luck that made the Peace Corps a reality for Dylan. To read more about Dylan’s upcoming adventure with Peace Corp, go here.
Daeja Tillis (Public Health ’19, CASC minor) took her first Service-Learning course relatively late — not until her junior year — but started with a full plunge in. Started with Jennifer Luckos’ CASC 3405 Community Engaged Research Methods, Daeja had her first service-learning experience in Health Hubs, where she explored the operations, negotiations, and dynamics of a food pantry in the Canal neighborhood. In Fall of 2018, when she was in Emily Wu’s CASC 3400 Theory and Practice: Community Action and Social Change, Daeja was immersed in the work of Young Moms Marin, where she learned about the systemic and personal challenges in the daily lives of teenage moms in the American society. These are all important contexts for Daeja as she furthers her professional path in Public Health! She drew on the methods she learned in Jennifer Lucko’s class for her senior project, “Living While Black:African Americans in the Public Space”
To these wonderful, committed, critically conscious CASC graduates, we wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors!
