Students of Color Environmental Collective Retention Events
Project Leader: Gabby Christina Ambayec
Sponsor: Students of Color Environmental Collective (SCEC)
Project Themes: Education, Outreach, and Behavior Change
Project Description: A critical part of community building in sustainability spaces is ensuring retention. BIPOC students undergo novel stress related to racism, imposter syndrome, and other forms of discrimination. Ultimately, this has negative impacts on the community’s overall wellness, including intense burnout and withdrawal. It is noted that UC Berkeley is swift to boast about its increasingly diverse student body while it simultaneously fails to provide adequate support to said student body. The SCEC Retention Events will provide direct resources related to self-care and professional development for our members through student-led workshops and guest presentations. Examples of potential projects include BIPOC Environmental Mixers, where BIPOC students and faculty have space to form a community with people of shared interests, while also focusing on intersectionality and resource sharing.
Project Goals:
1) Produce broad-range resources related to self-care, community engagement, professional development, and environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, People-of-Color (BIPOC) students.
2) Alleviate burnout for student organizers by providing stipends as compensation for efforts put towards resource-building.
3) Contribute to the overall increase in retention of BIPOC students on the UC Berkeley campus.