IMPACT UGA
  • About
    • Why IMPACT?
    • Sample Day
    • FAQs
  • Trips and Roundtables
    • 2019-2020 Trips
    • 2018-2019 Trips
  • Apply
  • Community Partners
    • Serving Athens
  • Contact
  • About
    • Why IMPACT?
    • Sample Day
    • FAQs
  • Trips and Roundtables
    • 2019-2020 Trips
    • 2018-2019 Trips
  • Apply
  • Community Partners
    • Serving Athens
  • Contact
Search

Education Access and Advocacy

charlotte, north carolina 
Name: Marina Badir
How did I get involved in IMPACT?
  • After hearing about the many great experiences that my friends have had on IMPACT trips, I decided to give it a try during my sophomore year. I went on the Community Health and Wellbeing trip in Indianapolis, and I loved the combination of learning about community health, serving in a new city, and meeting new people (12+ hour van rides basically lead to instant friendships).  It was truly an experience that heightened my sophomore year, so I wanted to further that experience by becoming a site-leader myself!
Why am I interested in my trip focus? 
  • Education is something that I have always valued, and its importance goes far beyond grades or intelligence. More than just a means for employment, education is truly the key to a solving many of the world’s problems, ranging from poverty to discrimination and even public health issues. Therefore, Education Access and Advocacy is something that I am passionate about as it shapes future outcomes in so many aspects of life. As someone who is interested in healthcare, I find it particularly interesting that Education is routinely found to be one of, if not the most influential, social determinants of health. Although education is compulsory in the United States, the quality of and access to education is not the same across all demographics. At a large, highly ranked university like UGA, it’s easy to forget how valuable a quality education truly is. 
Favorite IMPACT memory?​
  • My favorite memory from my Community Health and Wellbeing trip in Indianapolis was the feeling of family that developed so quickly on our trip. We entered the trip van (which we named Suzy) for the first time as a bunch of sleepy strangers and left with so many inside jokes and good memories. Something about a week of cold showers, naps on the floor, midnight cookies, and, most importantly, service-learning can make basically any group of strangers become close friends. 
Picture
Contact info
she/her/hers
marinabadir@uga.edu
706-267-6242
Picture

Contact Info: 
she/her/hers
megan.harris1@uga.edu
770-380-9522
Name: Megan Harris 
How did I get involved in IMPACT?
  • ​I first became involved with IMPACT because I was interested in participating in a service-based trip for spring break that was not affiliated with a particular religious/social/cultural group. My first trip focus was Food Justice, and though I came in with a skeptical attitude (particularly about having to wake up at 6 a.m. to travel the first day--I am NOT a morning person haha!) it ended up being one of my favorite experiences at UGA. I learned a great deal from my trip and made wonderful friendships with people I had never met before in my life, and--most importantly--I gained the skills, drive, and knowledge to advocate for food justice in the local Athens community.
Why am I interested in my trip focus?
  • Education Access & Advocacy is a broad topic that has a great deal of intersection with other social justice topics. I love learning, and I truly believe that education offers a solution for almost all of the world’s problems. As a college student it becomes almost too easy to get “tunnel-vision” and get so caught up in assignments, stressful deadlines, research, etc., that we lose sight of the joy and privilege that it is to learn. This trip focus takes a hard look at the education system within the United States and the way various systematic forms of discrimination and oppression intersect. I also love how this trip offers a great opportunity for human-centered service and meaningful interaction with the people we will be serving.
Favorite memory from an IMPACT trip?
  • How can I even pick just one! I suppose I would have to say that my favorite IMPACT memory was probably cooking breakfast for dinner in a messy church kitchen the very first night of my first IMPACT trip, after traveling all day and shopping for groceries with a group of people I’d never met before in my life. Not only was the meal delicious, it was also a great way to get to know the people I was going to be spending the next week with.

ABOUT EDUCATION ACCESS AND ADVOCACY

The Education Access and Advocacy trip to Charlotte, NC focuses on the issues in providing an equitable education across racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines while also examining how quality of and access to education influences numerous aspects of life.
TERMS TO KNOW:
Education Access: Access is an individual’s capability, right, or permission to obtain or acquire something, which can often be limited or impacted by an individual’s various identities including but not limited to age, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, native language, (dis)ability, and/or religious or spiritual affiliation. Education access is an individual’s access to quality, equitable, culturally-appropriate learning, instruction, and development.
Advocacy: Advocacy is public support for, promotion of, and recommendation of a particular cause or policy. In terms of education advocacy, this includes advocating for historically nondominant groups’ rights for an equitable education which is respectful of their individuals’ own personal dignities, as well as a close analysis of the factors that cause students to give up on their education or historically prevented them from pursuing it in the past.
School to Prison Pipeline: A trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Many of these children have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse, or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished, and pushed out. Often the result of zero tolerance policies.
Zero Tolerance Policies: Guidelines or rules which criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in schools lead to students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline.
Opportunity Gap: Refers to the ways in which race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, English proficiency, community wealth, familial situations, or other factors contribute to or perpetuate lower educational aspirations, achievement, and attainment for certain groups of students.
Achievement Gap: Any significant and persistent disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students, such as white students and minorities, for example, or students from higher-income and lower-income households.
Busing: Also called desegregation busing, in the United States, the practice of transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts as a means of rectifying racial segregation. Although American schools were technically desegregated in 1954 by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in practice they remained largely segregated owing to trends in housing and neighbourhood segregation. Busing came to be the main remedy by which the courts sought to end racial segregation in the U.S. schools, and it was the source of what was arguably the biggest controversy in American education in the later 20th century.
Segregation: In relation to our topic, when institutes refused to admit or separated and treated groups of students different groups differently. Historically, this occurred prominently in the US where black students were forced to remain in poor and severely disadvantaged school districts while white students were kept separate and provided with resources of much higher quality, and its after effects are still impacting the US to this day.
Equity: Refers to proportional representation (by race, class, gender, etc.) in same opportunities. To achieve equity, policies and procedures may result in an unequal distribution of resources. A common example of equity in higher-education is need-based financial aid. Equity is about distributing resources based on the needs of different individuals.
Intersectionality: Kimberlé Crenshaw coined this term in a paper as a way to help explain the oppression of African-American women. It is understood as a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. Intersectionality theory works to understand how individuals who experience oppression based on multiple aspects of their identity are impacted differently than a person who experiences oppression because of one aspect of their identity.
Food Insecurity: the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, culturally appropriate, nutritious food.
Teen Pregnancy: A pregnancy that occurs for a woman under the age of 20. Statistically negatively impacts the educational outcome of both mother and child.
Prison Education: Any educational activity that occurs inside prison. Courses can include basic literacy programs, secondary school equivalency programs, vocational education and tertiary education. Other activities such as rehabilitation programs, physical education and arts and crafts programs may also be considered a form of prison education. The goal is to help 
Inclusivity: The practice or policy of providing equitable access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those having physical or mental disabilities or belonging to other minority groups.

Sources: ACLU, edglossary.org, Encyclopedia Britannica, law.columbia.edu, Wikipedia

MORE ABOUT ​EDUCATION ACCESS AND ADVOCACY

ARTICLES:​

VIDEOS:

Desegregation and Resegregation of Charlotte’s Schools

Brief history of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district


​ What We Get Wrong About the Poverty Gap in Education
​
 Poverty’s Long-Lasting Effects on Students’ Education and Success

World Inequality Database on Education 

Miseducation: Is There Racial Inequality at Your School?

SOURCES:

​
Why Are Schools Still So Segregated?

Schools and Social Inequality: Crash Course Sociology 

​How America’s public Schools keep kids in Poverty 

​The ‘Opportunity Gap’ in US Public Education and How to Close It

​​How We’re Priming Some Kids for College and Others for Prison

Help for Kids the Education System Ignore

Rethinking Access and Success in Higher Education


​Intersectional links: 
​
Food For Thought: How Food Insecurity Affects a Child’s Education - American Youth Policy Reform 

​Gender Equality: Global Partnership for Education 

Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education

Why Education Matters to Health: Exploring the Causes

The Lifelong Learning of Lifelong Inmates

The Pandemic Is a Crisis for Students With Special Needs

The Importance of Education for Refugees

UNICEF: Girls’ Education
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • About
    • Why IMPACT?
    • Sample Day
    • FAQs
  • Trips and Roundtables
    • 2019-2020 Trips
    • 2018-2019 Trips
  • Apply
  • Community Partners
    • Serving Athens
  • Contact