Students Taking On Poverty
MISSION
The Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) Campaign is a nation-wide, student-led effort to address and combat issues of poverty. We seek to empower students to confront these issues through three avenues: information, motivation, and action. We are dedicated to connecting our conversations and research about the issues with actual deeds to tangibly affect change and take on poverty.
GALLERY
Click on the photos below to enlarge and for descriptions
STOP Co-President Ablorde welcomes guests to event.
BSA President Spencer moderated the event.
Featured guests Paola Ferrer, Julie Boatwright Wilson, and Reverend Eugene Rivers weigh into the discussion.
Discussion among students and our featured guests
What can we do? Featured guests tackle this problem with our students.
Students participating in dialogue.
Student engages with Reverend Rivers after the event.
Fruitful discussion continues after the event.
Personal conversations with our featured guests
Chaz Beasley '08, STOP founder and Co-Director Emeritus, introduces Edwards.
STOP with John Edwards
CURRENT NEWS
Poverty Across Communities has great turn out!
October 9, 2009
Last night at 8:30pm, approximately 45 students from the Black Students Association, the IOP Community Action Committee, the Native Americans at Harvard College, The Queer Students Association, Fuerza, the South Asian Association, the Chinese Students Association, the Dems, the Black Men's Forum, the Phillip Brooks House Association, and the Harvard African Students Association joined STOP for Poverty Across Communities. STOP designed Poverty Across Communities to be a large discussion among a diverse coalition of student groups on Harvard's campus about how poverty affects all of our different communities--from how it affects our educational opportunities, its obvious socio-economic implications, as well as its more subtle and insidious social and mental ones.
The discussion featured guests Reverend Eugene Rivers, head of the National TenPoint Coalition, Julie Boatwright Wilson, lecturer on Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, and Paola Ferrer, director of Community Impact at United Way Massachusetts Bay. The dialogue began with students and speakers probing at the various political, social, and economic aspects of poverty both locally within the Boston community, nationally, and globally. Then participants conversed about what our responsibility as Harvard students is in tackling this issue.
The event was moderated by BSA President, Spencer Hardwick. Check out the "Gallery" tab for pictures of the event.
COLLEGE BOUND
Under the Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) Initiative, College Bound is an after school program at New Mission High School in Roxbury, founded by Darryl Finkton and JJ Diah, dedicated to helping students learn what it takes to get into and graduate from college. Mentors are paired one-on-one with New Mission students and are required to meet once a week at whatever time is convenient for the pair. To learn more about how you can make a difference through College Bound, please inquire for more information via our "Contact" page.
FINANCIAL LITERACY
INITIATIVE
Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) is currrently working on an economic empowerment initiative for both Harvard students and the local Boston community. STOP is partnering with Ryan Mack, founder of Optimum Capital Management, to conduct workshops on and off campus. The project will occur in two phases. In November, Ryan will lead a workshop for Harvard students. Over the winter, STOP will work to create and develop workshops that can be taken out into Cambridge and Boston. In the early spring, phase two will begin, and STOP will conduct workshops for a variety of audiences in our local communities.
GLOBAL ACTION
STOP is partnering with Global Minimum (GMin), an NGO based in Sierra Leone and co-founded by David Sengeh ’10, to fundraise for the malaria net distributions that the organization undertakes, to create the curriculum for a Summer English Institute to help children maintain and improve their English speaking skills during the summer break, and to bring a microfinance organization to the areas in which GMin is centered.
DOMESTIC ACTION
The statistics of homelessness in our local community is staggering. Students Taking on Poverty (STOP) is working with the local homeless shelter in Harvard square this year to conduct General Educational Development (GED) test training, tutoring, and other volunteer work.
2009-2010 STOP Board
Co-Presidents:
Rebecca Scaife and Ablorde Ashigbi
Director of Community Outreach
Erica Senat
Director of Social Action (International)
Tyler Logigian
Director of Social Action (Social)
Candice Kountz
Director of Campus Advocacy, Webmaster
Alexandra Almore
Director of Finance
Lindsey Ross
CONTACT US
Have questions? We have answers. Send us an email for further information
about our programs, or to find out about how you can get involved!
