Jamila Humphrie-2010 Fellow
The Chuck Green journey began in January of this year with the daunting task of picking an organization to partner with. I made a strong connection with the staff of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) located in North Minneapolis. I whole-heartedly agree with its mission; to make every student in the Northside college-ready. Additionally, the neighborhood was familiar to me. I grew up in a similar community struggling with violence, drugs, and failing schools. By working with NAZ I became civically engaged in an environment that is deeply important to me. With Chuck Green we learned about theories of how to engage a community and how to have effective change in a community. I took the theories into practice with my project that focused on how to make outreach as efficient and meaningful as possible. I worked alongside ten staff workers of NAZ and documented their work in the form of ethnographic research. I conducted interviews with staff and then shared my reflections and suggestions with my advisor at the end of the summer.