This summer, 13 Yale undergraduates dedicated their summer vacation to community service in New Haven as Dwight Hall Summer Interns, working on projects that ranged from evaluating new techniques for assessing English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students to advocating for prison reform in Connecticut.
The 34-year-old Dwight Hall Summer Internship Program offers students the opportunity to work full-time for student, community or non-profit groups on projects they have designed themselves in response to community needs. The interns meet for weekly dinner seminars with a New Haven community leader to gather advice and learn more about important city issues.
The coordinator of this year's program was Hannah Croasmun '01, the newly hired program coordinator at Dwight Hall. This year's interns were funded by the Yale College Classes of 1949, 1955 and 1957, as well as the Yale Club of New Haven and the Seymour L. Lustman Fund.
A list of this year's Dwight Hall Summer Interns and their projects follows:
Cameron Abadi '03, was the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project (YHAAP) intern this summer. Along with Britta Schummacher, a friend from Germany, Abadi coordinated activities at Harmony Place, a unique venture between Yale students and members of New Haven's homeless community providing a drop-in center and organizing headquarters with resources to help the city's homeless, and at the YHAAP food pantry, the only food pantry in the Dwight neighborhood.
Cathy de la Aguilera '04 created a Housing Initiative Proposal for the Greater Dwight Development Corporation and aided the effort to find a permanent home for Harmony Place. She also coordinated operations for Respect Line, a group that helps the city's homeless people organize over political issues concerning them.
Vic Edgerton, a graduate student in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, conducted an epidemiological study of an environmentally contaminated area of Hamden that was built on a landfill.
Alek Felstiner '03, was an intern for the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, assisting New Haven's labor unions in order to learn more about their organizing efforts and techniques.
Shonu Gandhi '03 worked for Junta for Progressive Action in Fair Haven, studying the plight of undocumented workers in that neighborhood and creating a guide they could use to get basic services.
Ben Healey '03 investigated and implemented progressive policies as alderman of Ward 1 in New Haven for issues such as an expanded living wage initiative and affordable housing. He did his research with the help of the Connecticut Citizens Action Group.
Annie Hsu '04 updated the database for Literacy Volunteers of America and studied new evaluation techniques for ESL instruction that do not involve standardized tests. She hopes to implement these alternative evaluation techniques in the Yale student-run ESL program BRIDGES this fall.
Louise Levi '05 worked for the New Haven Ecology Project at Common Ground High School, a school in West Rock devoted to teaching students about the environment and organic farming. She helped with the planting and harvesting of organic foods and their distribution in urban New Haven, and she worked at the school's summer program.
Naomi Massave '04, the Association of Yale Alumni intern for New Haven, worked at the Connecticut Job Corps center and created a survey to determine what social services the center's students wanted.
Stephen Osserman, who graduated from Yale College this spring and is now a student at the School of Music, spent his summer advocating for prison reform with the grassroots group People Against Injustice.
Casey Pitts '03 worked for Dwight Hall organizing "Intersections," a speaker series starting this fall addressing issues such as education, criminal justice and health issues. He also interned for the Yale Law School's Jerome Frank Legal Services Clinic, working on cases involving immigration and amnesty issues.
Erin Scharff '03, worked with ECCO (Elm City Congregations Organized) and the New Haven Preservation Trust on organizing efforts for the Trowbridge Renaissance in Trowbridge Square, a historic neighborhood within the Hill neighborhood.
Ellen Thompson '03 worked as an intern for All Our Kin, a program that trains women to become daycare workers.
Dwight Hall, founded in 1886 by undergraduates at Yale, is a nonprofit umbrella organization (independent of Yale) for over 65 student-led service and social action groups.
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