SAAB grants allow students to take education off campus

My name is Mayana Bonapart aka May. I am a 4th year undergrad SOAN major. My SAAB grant will be used to attend the Building Resilient Communities Convergence at the Solar Living Institute (SLI) in Hopland, California. This four-day convergence is packed with different workshops, skill shares, and speakers all discussing, teaching, and learning the most cutting edge issues in environmental sustainability and community organizing. I not only have the opportunity to attend this convergence but I will also be an active participant, as I will be running an interactive zine-making booth. I will be able to share my own zine making skills through my prior projects and photography while also teaching others how to create their own projects on topics catered to their personal interests and/or based on the convergence itself as a way to process all the information that we will be learning. – Mayana Bonapart

My name is Lani Felicitas and I am using this SAAB grant to attend the twelfth annual Filipina Leadership Global Summit in San Francisco. It’s a summit just for Filipino women, which I think is important because Asian Americans are often lumped together into one category, even though we have different experiences in this nation and on this campus. For me, I don’t really have role models on this campus except for Anna Gonzalez, who never has time for me (laughs) and Angela Buck. I feel like I need to hear stories about what [Filipino women] go through because right now, being in a place of higher learning, I’m living out my story but I’m not exactly sure how the story goes. There have not been many Filipino women in leadership before. If I go to the summit, I can hear everyone’s stories, their challenges and their successes. Stories about what it means to carry your Filipino ancestry to higher learning. That’s the game plan! – Lani Felicitas