Sixteen proposed programs for the 2005-2006 year have already been approved by the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships as a part of its “UCLA in LA” project. Organizers of these programs, which involve partnerships between UCLA faculty and staff and members of the Los Angeles community, are in the process of developing their plans for the programs they will conduct over the next year.
The “UCLA in LA” program offers up to $50,000 in grants a year to faculty or staff members who partner with a member of the Los Angeles community in a project that focuses on children, youth and families, economic development or arts and cultural affairs. Each program has to be a year long, with certain milestones achieved each quarter. In addition, the only UCLA faculty and staff who can apply for funds are those with principle investigator status or those involved in external research projects.
“The intent is to encourage and to foster partnership work,” said Margaret Leal Sotelo, assistant director of the center. She explained that the program is an attempt to further connect the UCLA community with the city of Los Angeles through partnerships with campus departments and off-campus organizations that have expertise in community development.
Programs that wish to receive funding must present the center with a proposal that explains their goals, have a timeline of the project and contain budget justifications for the grant. Approved programs then receive funding in three payment installments over the course of the year.
One of these programs, titled “Art as Activism: A Collaborative Course Between World Arts and Cultures and the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking,” focuses on helping victims of trafficking through movement therapy classes. The program involves a two-quarter course, developed by WAC Professor Victoria Marks and Assistant Clinical Professor Kenneth S. Chuang, in which graduate or senior students learn about the causes and consequences of international trafficking and then develop a class or program for clients based on movement therapy.
“We propose that graduate students use the background they learn to come up with some sort of community service project that will help the CAST clients, most likely dealing with the category of movement or dance or yoga,” Chuang said.
Physical movement classes are especially popular at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking locations for many reasons, including the fact that they offer clients an escape from the reality of their everyday lives.
“The movement therapy facilitates interaction among the clients, so there is a great deal of increased communication and interaction among all of the participants,” said Bich Ngoc Do, social services coordinator of the coalition. “They have also told us that it offers them more self-control within themselves, and they feel that because of having to exert physical control over their own bodies, they feel that they are gaining a sense of self-control.
“Lastly, participants have shared with us that when they dance or when they move, they don’t have to think about their own problems anymore.”
Another project to be funded through “UCLA in LA” was developed through a partnership between UCLA Professor Timothy Fong and the Asian Pacific Planning Council that provides medical care, mental care and basic outreach to Asian communities. The program, titled “The Impact of Gambling on Los Angeles Asian Communities,” hopes to evaluate the causes and effects of gambling of members of the Asian community living in Los Angeles.
“We’ve seen a tremendous rise in legalized gambling recently, and we now want to study what the impact of that has been,” Fong said.
“The first thing we are going to do is screen as many clients as we can so that we can figure out what the percentage of clients is that have gambling problems. The second thing we have to do is to understand if gambling is a strain to the Asian communities, and if it’s affecting them,” he said. “We have to find out if the communities themselves are concerned and worried about gambling and what they have seen gambling do to their communities.
“Thirdly, we are going to hold community forums where we’ll hold roundtable discussions here at UCLA, where we’ll invite members of the Legislature and people that run the casinos in order to get everyone talking and on the same page, and to come up with good, effective treatments.”
Fong also explained that the causes for the popularity of gambling within the Asian community are largely unknown.
“It’s a combination of genetic influences, cultural influences and environmental influences, but no one has really studied this question before. We’re trying to understand it from a medical or psychiatric perspective,” he said.
Another partnership that has been approved for the coming school year is the “Museum Ambassadors Project,” organized by UCLA Graduate School of Education Professor Teresa Battenburg and Linda Blanshay, director of program development for the Museum of Tolerance.
Their aim is to educate and inform elementary school students and their families about what exhibits are at the Museum of Tolerance, and to understand what urban Los Angeles residents would like to see at the museum.
The researchers will send a group of about 25 education students studying to be elementary school teachers and give them intensive training about what the Museum of Tolerance has to offer. These students will then develop their own presentations for elementary schools – specifically urban schools in the southern Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.
“Our teacher-education program really focuses on our students making a connection with the community where they teach. This program would allow (the graduate students) to make a connection, learn about the problems of the community, uncover the assets of the community and, lastly, to learn about the needs of the community members from the community itself,” Battenburg said.