Category: AFST B234 Advancing Racial Justice

Aya Daterra (BMC ’28) and Lori Ackerman (BMC ’27)

Praxis Course: AFST234: Advancing Racial Justice

Semester: Fall 2025

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Dr. Bailey and Sarah Spath

Community Partner: Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Praxis Site Supervisor: Muneera Walker

Praxis Poster:

4 Aya_Daterra_Final project_revisedfinalversion

 

Further Context:

Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line (NHN) is a grassroots organization providing a range of services to support underrepresented neighbors and transform other entities that exist to support them in Lower Merion Township. NHN’s goal is to help create an empowered community where every person has equitable access to what they need to thrive. NHN has three primary areas of focus: Education Empowerment, Food Security, and Outreach. & Resource Connections. NHN has several recurring programs and runs events for the community. NHN runs a food pantry distribution every Thursday and Saturday from 10 AM-12 PM. They deliver meals to 130+ families every week. From 3-5 PM every Monday-Thursday, community members join the “Homework Club,” a free homework help and tutoring space for students of all ages. NHN puts-on several large events that are open to all! We attended a car show block party and “Tails on the Trails,” a dog walk and run to benefit NHN.

I, Lori, feel like my cup is overflowing in a beautiful way thanks to my work with NHN. Something that I was immediately struck by is the familiarity between everyone who comes to NHN events. They truly create spaces for genuine connection, which feels so vital in a time period defined so much by forces that stoke fear among community members and isolation from communal resources. I hope to continue supporting their work in future semesters.

I, Aya, am deeply grateful to be a part of the work NHN is doing. My time with NHN has helped me grow as a photographer, a learner, and a teacher. There is so much love and care present at NHN – it’s a space of inclusive and intergenerational community where neighbors support one another and help each other to thrive. Working with children at NHN has been a real blessing, giving me the chance to learn how to teach and how to support others in their learning. I am working to create ongoing fundraisers as well as clothing and food drives for NHN at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. I look forward to continuing my involvement with NHN beyond this class.

To help support NHN, you can contribute to NHN’s work directly on their website, share the work they are doing, attend the events they throw, and volunteer on site. Help is especially appreciated during the Homework Club, the food pantry, and packing food deliveries.



Jai Abbott (BMC ’27) and Autumn Kelly (BMC ’27)

Praxis Course: AFST234: Advancing Racial Justice

Semester: Fall 2025

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Dr. Darlyne Bailey & Sarah Spath

Community Partner: The Outley House with Self Incorporated

Praxis Site Supervisor: Troy Mouzon

Praxis Poster:

3 Autumn _Kelley_Advancing Racial Justice Poster_REVISED

 

Further Context:

Group Reflection:

– For this fall semester, we had the opportunity in our Advancing Racial Justice Class to partner up with various social impact organizations throughout Philadelphia. Committed to counteracting societal presumptions about the unhoused/homeless, we decided to work with site director Troy Mouzon and the Outley House (through the Self Incorporated organization), a shelter dedicated to housing and providing aid for unhoused adult men throughout Philly. Our work with Troy and at Outley has not been perfect, but nonetheless incredibly enriching and memorable. In our initial meetings with Troy, we discussed what he had learned during his time at Outley and how we could best assist him, the case workers, and the residents there.

– After this, we devised several different activities we would do during our 5 or so visits to Outley. This included a creative writing workshop, a teach-in on legal rights (interactions with the police), and a session on navigating academic and legal jargon and how to parse through more elitist language. While these events were more structured and planned in advance, some of the other, less formal work we did at Outley included one-on-one interviews with the residents (although it should be noted that these were often more like informal conversations rather than proper interviews) and helping where needed, such as organizing the various clothing rooms at Outley.

– The events we hosted at Outley were well-received, and we deeply enjoyed our time volunteering at and getting to know everyone there. In-person interactions with the system enriched our previous academic understanding of institutional inequality and the necessity for economic and racial justice. This experience provided both the framework and the confidence to be used in further civic action projects.

Jai’s Personal/Additional Thoughts:

I, Jai, was excited but nervous to start my work at the Outley house. I’m someone who has complained at length about the problem of academia in general, and Bryn Mawr in particular, separating itself from the communities it is stationed in and claims to serve. I was an exemplary case of this, however, as I had no prior experience working in homeless services, and was concerned that the presence of a somewhat sheltered college student would be more irritating than engaging for the residents I set out to serve. I underestimated myself and them, finding that the interest in sharing and connection was immediate and meaningful. The services Autumn and I provided were based on conversations we had had with residents, our site supervisor, and each other about what would be beneficial for this population. While we sometimes struggled in recruiting participants, those who attended were quickly engaged, spoke freely and earnestly, and tried, even when doing something they’d never done before, to get something out of it. This experience was a growing one, and I feel more prepared now to enter the communities I inhabit, talk to people, and not let assumptions, mine or theirs, get in the way of connection or care.

Autumn’s Personal/Additional Thoughts:

Similar to Jai, I was also very nervous but very excited to start volunteering at the Outley House. While diving headfirst into new and unfamiliar environments for me can sometimes feel uncomfortable and/or awkward, I knew, with the social biases towards the homeless in mind, that this work would be important. We discussed in class that community aid is not supposed to be easy, and although easier said than done, to embrace any feelings of discomfort and worry without putting yourself into too much strain. I had many worries about my ability to step up to the task of working at Outley, and to be honest, I still carry some of those concerns. However, now, I feel that my time at Outley has given me the skills to better manage any doubts I may have and how to channel them into the work I do— whether it was through the more formalized interviews with residents or getting to hear them share their various life experiences during creative writing sessions. Going forward, I want to make sure that my time at Outley doesn’t remain a one-off experience. Be it at Outley again or another organization, I want to continue to push myself out of my comfort zone and do more mutual aid and social justice work. I am really grateful for my time at Outley House and the wonderful community there. I feel that my time here, again like Jai, has given me the tools needed to continue doing more community work and helping others.

 

Adara Alexander (BMC ’26), Margeaux Thompson (BMC ’28), Sav Mucher (BMC ’27)

Praxis Course: AFST234: Advancing Racial Justice

CEL Site Supervisor: Kristopher Pittman

Professors: Darlyne Bailey and Sarah Spath

Praxis Poster:

2 Adara Alexander, Margeaux Thompson, Sav_revised

 

Further Context:

SELF Inc. is a Philadelphia-based organization focused on helping unhoused individuals to achieve self-sufficiency and secure permanent housing. They offer a range of housing services, including shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing, all of which provide mental health support programming. Ife Wellness Center is one of SELF Inc.’s five emergency housing shelters in Philadelphia. Ife specializes in serving those struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. It’s a long-term housing facility that aims to secure stable housing for residents before they leave. They offer a few emergency overnight beds. It is co-ed and for adults, but also has a small youth program for teens and young adults. Ife is rare in that it allows residents to rejoin the sober living community after relapsing if they are able to make a plan with their care team. 

After discussing with our CEL Site Supervisor and each other, our group landed on utilizing Ife’s existing framework of group activities and therapies as the basis of our project. We each chose to focus on a different theme for our group based on our interests, majors, and ideas expressed by residents and employees at Ife. We decided that each week, we could come on Fridays to Ife and gather interested residents in the cafeteria at several large, close tables to encourage an open, collaborative, social environment. We would then take turns introducing an activity, each within the focus of our own group, united under an overarching weekly theme. In practice, participants came in and out throughout our time present each week, so rather than having highly structured activities, we instead laid out all of the activities on the table and explained to each person as they came in what we each had to offer. Participants could then select whatever activity or activities appealed to them and work as a group. Throughout this time, we listened to music, chatted about the activities and their purposes as well as life generally, and often formed relationships with participants.  

Adara’s group, Mind and Meaning, attempted to foster an environment for participants to articulate emotions and experience through creativity, and to empower participants by providing tools to strengthen emotional regulation and self-agency.  Each week, Adara designed artistic activities with therapeutic or mental health-focused elements. By chatting while working on these projects, the group was able to integrate mental health discussions through community conversations and reflective dialogue.  

Sav’s group, Creative Voices, included a multi-week “poetry club” packet in which participants could read a series of quotes about the importance of poetry and creative self-expression, read about a specific poetic theme each week that aligned with the overarching weekly activity theme, read examples of poems in this theme, and then complete a series of poetry prompts. These prompts varied in length, complexity, and tone, and they helped to inspire those who were already interested in writing poetry and to introduce poetry to those with less experience. This group aimed to encourage storytelling as a tool for self-discovery and empowerment. Residents generally responded very positively and were often inclined to share their own previous writings or writings they created during the group with students and other residents aloud. Residents were generally very supportive of each other’s share-outs and often encouraged the CEL Site Supervisor to participate.  

Margeaux’s group, Community Threads and Self Care, focused on creating two-part activities with a creation element and a self-reflection/group discussion element. Activities emphasized the development or strengthening of self-care skills and reflection on building community. Another goal of the group was to gain an understanding of participants’ experience with social work and social workers to inform and improve future career endeavors and social work experiences.  

 

Salem Boyer (BMC ’28), Makayla Coleman (HAV ’26) , and Jess Smith (BMC ’25)

Internal Process: Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Course Instructor: Darlyne Bailey

Field Site: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Field Supervisor: Muneera Walker & Rachael Omansky Chou

Praxis Poster:

ARJ_Internal Process_Combined

 

Further Context:

This semester, we had the opportunity to volunteer at Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line (NHN) as the Internal Process team. NHN is a non-profit organization that supports underrepresented youth and communities in the greater Philadelphia area.

NHN has many different programs; however, we focused on the Education Empowerment program, which offers free in-person after-school homework help, one-on-one tutoring through a hybrid platform, and year-round youth mentoring. As the Internal process team, we aimed to review the structure of NHN to find strengths and weaknesses while also growing the program organically to include new features. Specifically, we focused on cursive writing, promotion, family engagement, large group reading, and cataloguing.

Our first project was catalogs. The catalogs consisted of documenting and digitalizing the book and games offered at NHN on the Main Line. This process was tedious. After taking pictures of everything, we put them onto a google doc. Then, we made them into catalogs to highlight the expansive library with many popular books and detail the skills learned by the games. This project was just an inventory project. It revealed a need for books for kids above the age of 12 at NHN.

Our second project was CursiveLogic. CursiveLogic as offered by our Praxis supervisor, Muneera, is a cursive writing program that tries to use colors, shapes, and catchphrases as a way of trying to make learning cursive more comprehensive and more accessible. We first began by researching the history of cursive writing to which we created a timeline that goes from the 1500s to the present day. Alongside the timeline, we offer a brochure that includes the research done about the benefits of cursive and our investigation of CursiveLogic. The last part of the brochure includes the way that CursiveLogic can be implemented at NHN.

Our final project involved adding family engagement events. We developed a series of family-oriented programs and organized them in a detailed spreadsheet. We planned five events to take place throughout the year, with the ultimate goal of increasing parent involvement and fostering a sense of community among families. The programs include Open House/Back to NHN Night, Reading Workshop, Career Day, Community Cookout, and a Gardening Workshop. We first created an event planner spreadsheet that can be used as a template for organizing any future events at NHN. We filled the planner out for each of the five events to provide a complete event description, logistics, objectives, and to-do tasks. We also included a post-event evaluation section that can be used to track the reach and impact of each event to analyze how they can expand over time. Lastly, we created mock flyers for each event, which can be edited and used for NHN promotional use. We wanted to provide both the spreadsheets and flyers to give a clear picture of what we imagine the events to be and make the implementation process seamless.

I, Makayla, really thought I knew about racial justice, but I was wrong. I thought I knew what most NGOs behaved like, but I was wrong. I had an amazing experience with NHN and the overall community that upholds the shared commitment of the four pathways: radical love, cultural humility, forgiveness, and compassion. This experience has forever changed my perspective on ongoing racial issues within the environmental justice movement. I believe that if we can heal people, then the next step is to heal the world.

I, Jess, really enjoyed my time at NHN and am very grateful for the growth opportunities and insights into what racial justice can look like. I learned how much of a difference community-based education can make as a supplement to traditional schooling and how it is in many cases a more effective environment for teaching because of the extra intentionality behind the methods of youth mentoring. I also observed how process improvement efforts can happen organically and not always need a systematic approach. The mission of Neighbors Helping Neighbors inspired me to pursue a role in process improvement, as this experience gave me insight into how that can be achieved naturally within a community-based organization.

I, Salem, am very appreciative of the opportunity to work with NHN. Having been involved with similar yet less successful educational organizations in the past, it was really enlightening to observe how NHN is actually enacting racial justice. I think it boils down to immense care and patience at every structural level. I learned about applying academic concepts and research to real life contexts, which, being community-based, differ from traditional settings. I feel emboldened in my ability to contribute to the communities in my life, on both an organizational and personal level.

Hana Sandomirsky (BMC ’26), Peyton Roberson (BMC ’26), and Diane Gentry

Creative Data: Exploring intersections of Data and Community with Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Semester: Fall 2024

Course Instructor: Darlyne Bailey

Field Site: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Field Supervisor: Muneera Walker & Rachael Omansky Chou

Praxis Poster:

ARJ_Creative Data_Combined_Reduced

 

Further Context:

Neighbors Helping Neighbors (NHN) on the Main Line is a grassroots organization supporting underrepresented communities and youth in the Greater Philadelphia region. One of the three cornerstone initiatives of NHN programming is their Education Empowerment work. During the school year an important part of this work takes place during their Homework Club which provides Free in-person after-school homework help and healthy snacks, Monday through Thursday. Tutors include retired teachers and students from Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges. Our praxis project focused on collecting and analyzing data to both qualitatively and quantitatively measure the success of the NHN Homework Club program. We aimed to understand and illustrate how NHN’s efforts effectively support their participants’ academic success, using both qualitative insights and quantitative metrics.

We had to redefine the project several times as we had to be particularly careful about the data we were collecting since the work we were doing was with children; permission forms and ethics, and protecting privacy were especially important. Defining those rules and making sure we understood those parameters took some exploration and help from our mentors.

Next, understanding how to best frame our survey questions to present information in a format that the children would connect to was challenging. After two days of implementing paper surveys with lukewarm reception, we were inspired by a class reading to pursue a community data collection method called photovoice. Making data collection FUN drastically changed the levels of excitement in participating – no participant opted out, and several tried very hard to convince us to take the survey twice so they could take additional photos.

Finally, data sorting, labeling, and interpretation are the biggest remaining chunks of work that our team is left with, and in retrospect, we think collecting the data should have been half the project and an entire separate semester could have been dedicated to sorting and interpreting the data.

Our Creative Data team is left still wanting to better understand how to represent and communicate the data we have collected to clearly define next steps, maybe not for our project, but to leave the work we have done in a better place for another project to be able to use the photos and paper surveys as a foundation for their own photovoice work with NHN. One semester was just too short a timeline to accomplish a project of this scope. Our group’s final step will be the sorting and labelling all of the images that we collected with their corresponding descriptions collected verbally from the children as the photos were taken. Following this, we hope the photos could be used as tools in a series of discussions at NHN to find themes and meanings, perhaps using the 10S Framework, and drawing inspiration from the Photovoice project and the teachings of Paulo Freire.