Mornings for Brenda Hernandez began with a car ride into the slums of India.
As part of her internship with the Bhoruka Charitable Trust this past summer, Hernandez, a UC Berkeley senior majoring in urban studies, frequented the streets of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India. Camera in hand, she documented slums that suffer from poverty but burst with energy. Many of the children called her “didi,” or “older sister.”
The internship was part of the fieldwork component of her minor in global poverty and practice. Hernandez’s job was to observe the community and to create a documentary of her organization’s efforts to educate urban citizens about basic and sexual health.
This summer, about 60 students did fieldwork for the minor, researching and working in developing regions in the Bay Area and beyond. The minor, offered through the UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies, is just another facet of the campus’s role as a public-service powerhouse.
Along with the required fieldwork, the minor requires five courses in a related field. Other components of the minor include a thesis or seminar regarding the fieldwork and retreats for students to reflect on their experiences.
“During the fieldwork, we realized that we’re not going to save the world, but we are bringing awareness and humbling ourselves,” Hernandez said. “This is a learning experience for us.”
Since its inception in 2007, the minor has yielded 450 alumni. About 200 active students are currently enrolled in the minor, and every summer, anywhere from 60 to 80 students head abroad or across the Bay to conduct their fieldwork.
“It’s a testament to the students particularly in Berkeley,” said Chetan Chowdhry, program coordinator of student advising for the minor. “It’s been a model for other institutions to see that students have this desire to change and capacity to act.”
Senior Tali Gires completed her fieldwork in a rural Amazon community in Peru, interviewing local women about their needs for development in the region. She said it was an “interesting and complex” process — in part due to the project matter but more so because of the relationships she fostered. Coming from a privileged community as a college researcher came with its own stigma, Giras said.
“I was there to learn more about them, rather than give to them — to provide an opportunity for people in the community to voice their needs,” Giras said. “I had to try and show them that I was stepping away from whatever superiority complex people assume you come in with just based on where you come from.”
While Hernandez and Gires primarily did research-based practices, junior Emily Truax worked with a water sanitation nongovernmental organization that aimed to make “water cheaper in a democratic way,” facilitating the installation and providing marketing strategies in San Cristobal, Mexico. She worked with three other girls and interviewed communities about the problems in the area.
“I feel like that experience helped me grow as a person,” Truax said. “Did it help them? We don’t really know. We can’t tell if what we did will last into the future. But you can never do enough, and I think I learned so much from the experience.”
Chowdhry said that there has been discussion within the UC system of increased collaboration between campuses as well as potentially expanding the minor to other campuses. In other areas of public service, UC Berkeley stands out as the third-largest contributor of graduates to Teach For America and the sixth-highest contributor to the Peace Corps in 2012.
Katie Chen, a service programs fellow at the UC Berkeley Public Service Center who graduated last May, noted that UC Berkeley, through its many programs such as Alternative Breaks, emphasizes understanding these issues instead of solving them entirely.
“We encourage students to conduct fieldwork and to reflect on their experience, to have intention and mindfulness as to what you’re doing in these areas,” Chen said.
After graduation, some students participating in the minor expressed interest in doing similar work for nongovernmental organizations. Hernandez said she “fell in love with India” and hopes to return for work.
“My passion is helping others,” Hernandez said. “I get a genuine satisfaction from it, and it motivates me to do more work. I want to work in the poverty realm in the right way.”
Sophie Ho is the lead campus life reporter. Contact her at [email protected].
Correction(s):
A previous version of this article misidentified Katie Chen as a fellow with the Cal Corps Public Service Center. In fact, she is the service programs fellow of the UC Berkeley Public Service Center, previously known as Cal Corps.