Hauser Center Summer Fellows 2009
The Hauser Summer Fellowship program supports Harvard students working with the Hauser Center or in nonprofit organizations across the globe.
Hauser Center Summer Fellows 2009
Jamila Amarshi
(Harvard Graduate School of
Education, 2009) is working in Gujarat, India with Pratham,
the largest education nonprofit in India, with programs
focused on literacy and basic math skills using an
accelerated curriculum, the effects of which can be seen in
as little as three weeks. During the internship Jamila will
monitor and evaluate Pratham’s programs in the rural and
urban setting; collect and analyze data to produce reports
for the organization and the Gujarat government; and assist
the pre-school education program by illustrating and
selecting content for Gujarat’s educational books. Jamila
will also help design an activity-based curriculum and
assessment tools for children living in slum-areas. The
curriculum will focus on literacy, math, and science.
Ani Bagdasarian
(Harvard Graduate School of
Education, 2009) is interning in Cleveland with the
Cleveland Foundation, the first community foundation in the
United States and the third largest today. Specifically she
will be working with the Greater University Circle
Initiative, a strategic partnership between the foundation,
major medical institutions in the area, local
philanthropies, financial institutions, community groups
and the local government of the City of Cleveland to
stimulate investments in the University Circle
neighborhood. For this work she will evaluate current
programs under the Greater University Circle Initiative;
assist with the launch of the GUC Evergreen Observer; and
identify aspects of the Greater University Circle
Initiative that could potentially be scalable models in
other U.S. cities.
Shayla Ball
(Harvard Kennedy School, 2009)
is working in New York City with Black Girls Rock!, Inc., a
Brooklyn-based nonprofit mentoring outreach program that
was established to promote the arts and to encourage
dialogue about the images of women in hip-hop music and
culture. Shayla’s responsibilities will include grant
writing, policy and legislation advising, and general
operational and organizational support. She will also work
with the executive director and executive board on the
implementation of existing program activities such as the
Scratch DJ Academy for girls and other projects planned for
Summer and Fall 2009.
Ashley Berendt
(Harvard Divinity School,
2009) and Philip Schaffner (Harvard Kennedy School, 2009)
will be assembling an online, searchable catalogue of
benchmarking reports produced over the last four years by
students in Professor Christopher Stone’s course The
Strategic Management of Nonprofit and Non-governmental
Organizations. In the course, students identify a specific
activity that a client nonprofit organization is planning
to add, alter, or improve, and conduct research on how five
or six organizations known for their excellence in this
particular activity successfully do their work. The nearly
60 benchmarking reports produced address a broad range of
topics of importance to nonprofits, such as how to manage a
satellite office, plan a major fundraising event,
effectively distribute mailings, or invest in an effective
knowledge management system.
Beth Christian
(Harvard Divinity School,
2009) is interning in Boston with the Haymarket People’s
Fund, a Jamaica Plain-based organization whose mission is,
through grantmaking, fundraising, and capacity building, to
support grassroots organizations that address the root
causes of injustice, as well as to organize groups and
individuals to increase sustainable community philanthropy
in the region. In her internship Beth will be involved with
development/fundraising, grantmaking, and organizational
aspects of the Haymarket People’s Fund.
Lily Huang
(Harvard Graduate School of
Design, 2010) is working in China with the Pediatric
HIV/AIDS Treatment Support Project (PATS), an organization
which provides support to children living with HIV to
ensure that they have access to medications and the proper
nutrition necessary to keep their immune systems strong;
opportunistic infections are promptly treated; and,
medications are taken exactly as prescribed in order to
limit drug resistance. As the first component of her
project Lily will focus on the careful reconsideration of
the orphanage as a designed space for wellbeing for
patients, staff and the wider community- examining
alternatives environments to promote child health. The
second component of the project involves creating a
framework and design template for PATS Child Sponsorship
packages.
Rahim Kanani
(Harvard Divinity School,
2010) will be working within the domain of Justice and
Human Rights Organizations at the Hauser Center to
coordinate a conference on international criminal justice
to be held this September at the United Nations in New
York. In addition, Rahim will contribute to the design and
development of new initiatives housed within the domain,
including a project on the role of religion and faith-based
organizations in advancing global justice and human rights.
Thor Steingraber
(Harvard Kennedy School, 2009)
is assisting the Arts, Culture, and Media domain at the
Hauser Center in the development of programs, events, and
strategies to engage the leaders of arts institutions with
leading scholars across disciplines about the wide array of
challenges facing arts institutions—from articulating the
distinct contribution of professional performing artists to
the economic and management challenges of engaging new
audiences in an increasingly digitized world.
Kun Tang
(Harvard School of Public
Health, 2009) is working in China with the China Youth
Network (CYN), the first-ever youth initiated NGO in China
advocating for Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) and
Rights of young people, and working to provide services and
education on ASRH and HIV/AIDS prevention. Kun will produce
a case study about CYN to share with domestic and
international youth organizations and to be a learning tool
for CYN to identify its past success and failures and
inform its future strategies; work with the Core Group
members (Board Members) in the drafting of CYN National
Strategic Plans and development of performance indicators;
and will assist CYN officers to conduct monitoring and
evaluation through data collecting at the service delivery
points.
Eugene Yim
(Harvard School of Public
Health, 2010) is interning in Boston with the Operational
Medicine Institute (OMI), and will focus on an initiative
dedicated to developing the concept of Disaster Diplomacy –
a novel and evolving concept that broadly considers both
the strategies for effective humanitarian action in
response to crisis as well as the political consequences of
those actions. He will continue the line of academic
inquiry on this topic by writing memos and editorials; help
plan and organize a conference on Disaster Diplomacy; help
put together a speaker series at Harvard and a working
group that can convene regularly to clearly define and
operationalize the concept of Disaster Diplomacy; and will
facilitate interdisciplinary exchange with government
agencies by traveling to Washington, D.C. to meet with key
constituents in the Department of Defense, State
Department, and Homeland Security.