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Yesenia Grajeda Yepez, 2019-2020 Knapp Fellow, Discusses Familia United

Yesenia’s project focuses on developing and implementing an app, Familia United, which assists Central American immigrant families in Yuma County, Arizona with family tracing and reunification. Recently, Yesenia discussed her Knapp Fellowship with a Community Engaged Scholar. For more information about Yesenia’s Fellowship, please click here to read her previous interview. 

With regards to COVID-19, Yesenia noted that “migration itself has slowed down due to the restrictions of the Trump Administration.” However, since “a lot of people are still traveling to their families, shelters are promoting best sanitation practices around shelters.” Yesenia explained that “migrants move regardless of what’s going on,” so “it hasn’t been harder to connect people with their families. People are still boarding flights and buses to travel. 

“One of the cool things about the Knapp Fellowship is that you can navigate and manage your responsibilities.” 

When discussing the current stage of her project, Yesenia is “working with Help USA to improve the app.” With her remaining resources, Yesenia is “developing trainings and workshops for future volunteers.” This will “make the transition to becoming a volunteer much easier.” Currently, Yesenia is working with Ms. Amy Cohen, director of the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, to form an Alternative Break trip. Yesenia’s “proposal” hopes to “make a case study from the first Alt Breaks cohort and then see what lessons are to be learned and expanded on.” 

“As far as this project is concerned, I see myself as an advocate and group leader for the Alternative Breaks project.” 

Yesenia “finished core part of the fellowship a while back;” now, she’s “trying to move the Fellowship to the next stage and make it more sustainable.” Yesenia noted that this Fellowship and her Master’s capstone has “helped her better manage other projects in DC and in other areas.”  After her capstone and Fellowship, Yesenia “aims to be an analyst of Latin America, for a think tank or a government agency.” 

“I came to DC to raise the voices from the border.”  

If Yesenia had gone to a different school, she noted that “[she] wouldn’t have had the shock of an environment change.” Yesenia asserted that she would “not have been shaped or be inspired to pursue my field of study if [she] stayed in Arizona.”   

To future Knapp Fellows, Yesenia’s “main advice would be to make sure you’re doing it because you care and it will further knowledge in your area of study, not because you want to build your resume.”   

Further, Yesenia advises future Fellows “to be open to change.” By being open to change, Yesenia “finished [her] project early and had time to take the project in a new direction.” Since “the shelter” Yesenia “was working with in Yuma was shut down by government, [she was] able to work with the shelter in Tucson.”  

By being “open to change, [you’re] open to solutions that could happen at any time.” 

  • To learn more about the Knapp Fellowship, please click here 
  • To learn more about Alternative Breaks, please click here. 

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