The Laspa Action Grants were established to provide opportunities for students to transform knowledge, passion, and ideas into action; demonstrate creative and effective problem solving; create partnership(s) in the public or private sector; and produce outcomes that make a positive impact.
Students partnered with faculty advisors to submit grant proposals, and the Laspa Center for Leadership steering committee, composed of students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and trustees, narrowed down the submissions to six finalists, and chose two grant recipients. Ultimately, all six proposals were funded through the generosity of trustees, staff, and friends of the College.
Improving a Program to Help Women Succeed
By Maria Newman ’16
When women are released from prison, they often find themselves lacking the financial resources and job skills they need to begin their new lives. Alexandra Harder ’17 used her Laspa Action Grant to help improve a program focused on building networking, communication, and entrepreneurial skills for these women and the student interns who also participated.
Harder’s interest in the issue began last spring when she took Scripps’ Political Economy of Food class, taught by Nancy Neiman Auerbach, Mary W. Johnson Professorship in Teaching and Scripps professor of Politics. The course focuses on the environmental and social impact of our current system of food production and distribution, a research area that has come to be known as food justice. It also includes a practical internship component that pairs students with local justice organizations.
Through the class, Harder learned about the local justice organization Crossroads, a transitional program for women recently released from prison. For her internship, Harder chose to work with the newly formed and Scripps-run Social Entrepreneurs Academy, a series of workshops designed to help Crossroads alumnae navigate practical life skills, such as job interview preparation or financial planning. As summer break neared, Harder feared the program would languish since it had only been funded as a pilot project.
So Harder turned to the Laspa Action Grants as a resource to assess and bolster the academy’s success. With assistance from the grant, she was able to stay in Claremont over the summer and work closely with the academy’s coordinators to review the program and ensure it continued to run smoothly. Harder conducted focus groups, phone interviews, and met with program participants and volunteers to understand how best to maintain and improve the workshops. “There was unanimous approval for the program and every participant was in support of it,” she says. “Everyone had something to gain from the program, from student volunteers to the Crossroads alumnae, which I think made it really worthwhile.”
Harder’s findings have been used to ensure the academy would continue at Scripps College. Starting this spring, the Social Entrepreneurs Academy will be run through the Laspa Center for Leadership. “I don’t want to give away too much, but there are a lot of exciting things in the works for the academy!” she says. “Our main focus is making it more of a collaboration, with more participation by the women and less lecture-based programming.”
In the meantime, Harder has continued her involvement with Crossroads. Every Tuesday, she volunteers with Fallen Fruit From Rising Women, a Crossroads social enterprise closely tied to Harder’s interests in food justice. Student volunteers work together with Crossroads women to cut, boil, jar, and transform fresh local fruit into jam, the proceeds of which are donated back to support Crossroads programs and provide stipends for women when they graduate.
Of her work with these women, Harder says, “Being able to learn from their life experiences, and to share stories with them while we make jam together in the kitchen or learn together in the classroom is one of the things I’ll cherish most from my time at Scripps.”
For more of our Laspa Action Grants series, click here.