The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria Class of 2014 ● Columbia University
Co-Founder of Ravenswood Community Fridge
Today I am the person I am because I gave myself a chance eight years ago – I took the risk to try and apply to college. I was the first in my family to go to college, and I was accepted to the college of my dreams. Not many young girls get that opportunity, let alone young brown Latina girls. I learned that I couldn’t sit there and wait for an opportunity to be handed to me, I had to be proactive, take advantage of my education, utilize the resources I did have at hand to the best of my ability, and not be afraid to dream. It’s important to make young minds aware of the autonomy they have over their future and their education.
There is no timeline or no “right” way to…pursue [your future], so even if you don’t have it all figured out, even if you aren’t the best at school right now, or don’t know what you want to study yet, the best thing you can do for yourself…is to try.
My director of college counseling (DCC) came into our lives junior year of high school and I think we got lucky with her because she went above and beyond for us — from scholarships, to resume writing, to making lists, to helping us visit some of our listed schools, to being all-around available during lunch and after school hours. The special thing about our DCC was that she was supportive all around in my choices and process which meant a lot to me. I remember coming into her office one day to talk about my list of potential schools. I had a huge list, filled with a lot of reach and dream schools. I was driven and ambitious and I’m thankful she never dimmed that and was in fact supportive of my choices. She always kept it real with me and I think that was the connection I valued most about our relationship.
After high school, I went off to Columbia University. During my first two years, I took up a lot of intro psych courses trying to figure out where I fit in and what I wanted to study. In the summers I would intern in poverty research projects and it’s where I came to learn the most about the world, especially what was happening in my very own community. The shocking healthcare disparities and education gap that existed in predominantly black, brown, low-income communities were a real eye-opener and I yearned to do more. It wasn’t probably until my senior year where I realized the interdisciplinary routes you could take with being a psych major. As a first-gen student, it was exciting to learn that I didn’t have to fit in a box and that I could intertwine both my love to help others and my burning drive for equity.
These days you can spot me in my spare time doing food rescues and organizing for the Ravenswood Community Fridge, which my close friend, Gisselle (TYWLS ’14 alumni) and I founded last year in our hometown Astoria, Queens. Our fridge is part of a growing collective of fridges that have been popping up all around NYC and across the country since last year as an urgent response to the exasperated need for food relief due to the global pandemic. We work within the food justice framework, addressing this country’s growing food crisis at the local level. A large part of this country’s food crisis is food waste which we work to mitigate by adopting sustainable practices (i.e: food rescue, food sharing, and composting). Through our food share model, we also empower our communities to take on collective care and mutual aid efforts: neighbors helping neighbors and sharing resources.
