- Social Innovation Fellowship
Award Year
Love in Action is a 16-20 student tutoring organization that is the service sector of Brown University's Reformed University Fellowship. For the last couple of years, LIA has worked especially to serve the Liberian community in Providence, meeting for 2-3 hours every Saturday morning to provide academic tutoring to kids in grades 2-8 in primarily math and English. My project through the CV Starr Fellowship is to strengthen and improve this program in order to better serve the needs of the Liberian community. Though we are currently a small, relatively new organization, I hope that by connecting with and learning from other organizations, LIA can become a more effective, sustainable, and beneficial resource for the Liberians in Providence.
Personal Statement
I became involved with LIA ever since arriving at RISD in 2009. At that time, the program was even smaller than it is now, and described itself as merely a 'tutoring program.' However, after my first session I realized that the program was not simply a tutoring program; the students who arrived in the program were all Liberian, all of them struggled with their schoolwork in different ways, and most of them came from disadvantaged homes. As I continued to be involved with the program, I became closer with many of the kids and began to understand their home life and the struggles their families were going through. Over these past two years, I have really enjoyed getting to know them, and I am so excited to be able to work on a project that can make this program more useful and effective for them and their families.