Stories and Highlights
Enjoy these stories and testimonials from some of the students, faculty, and community partners involved in community engagement with the CCE.
The Clifford Symposium
The 2024 Clifford Symposium: Student and Faculty Reflection
Matt Lawrence, Academic Director of Privilege & Poverty (P&P) at Middlebury College, facilitates a conversation with former P&P interns Ellie Cady ’25.5 and Freddi Mitchell ’25 about their involvement in the 2024 Clifford Symposium on Home, Housing and Belonging in Middlebury and Beyond.
ML:
Hi, Freddi. Hi, Ellie. It’s good to see you again. We were spending a lot of time together over first few weeks of the semester and over the last year, really, for the, the 2024 Clifford Symposium. So it’s nice to have a chance to reconnect and to debrief and work reflect on what that experience was like.
My name is Matt Lawrence. I’m the Academic Director of the Privilege and Poverty Cluster at Middlebury, and I also teach in the sociology department. Do you each want to introduce yourselves?
EC:
Sure. Hello, I’m Ellie Cady. I’m a Senior Fab, and I’m studying psychology with minors in Global Health and Spanish.
FM:
Yeah. And I’m Freddie Mitchell. I’m a senior studying international politics and economics with a minor in French.
ML:
And we were three of the organizers for the 2024 Clifford Symposium at Middlebury it was titled to Home Housing and Belonging and Middlebury and Beyond. but we had some other organizers as well. So we were joined by Jason Duquette-Hoffman, who’s an assistant director at the Center for Community Engagement. Professor James Davis from the Department of Religion. Professor Erin Sassin from the Department of Art and sorry, the Department of Art History and Architecture and Professor Pam Berenbaum from the Global Health Department and the Global Health Program. And so we’re really focused today on your role as students in the development and the planning of the symposium.
Why don’t we talk a bit even before we get into speaking about the symposium itself just about how we all connected the ways that the Privilege and Poverty cluster in particular brought us together. How did you all become involved in the P&P cluster?
EC:
Yeah, so I had attended a few different events that was hosted at the, that were hosted at the CCE before becoming involved with the Privilege and Poverty cluster. So I was able to talk to a lot of students and former interns who have worked at a variety of different nonprofits in Addison County and had really enjoyed their experiences. And I also really liked that it had a capstone aspect to it. So it’s not just the summer internship experiential learning piece that you are able
to receive, but also you have to take a few classes that will give you a better understanding of what you’re experiencing during your summer internship. And I really like that aspect of it. Oh,
FM:
And so I hadn’t been involved in the P&P academic cluster before during my internship,
but I ultimately thought the internship was something that I would be interested in just because of the way to gain experience sort of in the field of public service by working directly one-on-one with individuals in the community. And I also had thought about a lot about going to school in Addison County in Vermont, and feeling a little bit detached from the local community. And I thought it would be a great way to get to know Middlebury a little bit more.
ML:
That’s great. I mean, that sounds like why we do in P&P especially this idea of experiential learning being really a centerpiece of a Middlebury education, that you take some classes related to some interests. You do an internship and then you come back and share what you did and learned during that internship with the rest of the community. And that, that community connection is such a big part of it. We don’t have a major or minor in Addison County Studies. So, you know, those students are trying to make those connections and understand this place.
Where you’re living for four years or maybe longer, embedding that in some kind of service opportunities. That is really what we are trying to do in P&P and what we’re trying to do throughout the Center for Community Engagement.
So the Clifford Symposium focused on this question of housing and housing affordability, housing accessibility, now something that both of you were, working on during your internships. What did you do for your internships?
EC:
So I was placed at the Charter House, which is a low-barrier homeless shelter in town. So there are a lot of individuals who were experiencing housing insecurity, substance use disorders and link other issues. And I was able to have a lot of sit-down conversations with them and hear about their own individualized stories of how they came to be at the Charter House and what their futures or what they hope their futures would look like. I also was able to work directly with the director of the Charter House and hear more about some of her goals for Addison County and some of the challenges that many of the residents and guests at the Charter House face.
FM:
Yeah, so similar to Ellie was working a lot on housing over the summer. I was working with Addison Housing Works and Addison Housing Works is a local non-profit dedicated to owning and maintaining affordable housing in Addison County. So they as an organization provide many of the people who have passed through the Charter House or John Graham shelter with a permanent home. And so I got to learn throughout the summer about the different resources available that fund affordable housing one then being the low income housing tax credit. And I did a lot of research for that on how that money was funneling down to the state of Vermont how it was, how the criteria that are set in different states in New England and how they compare to the state of Vermont and maybe what are the roadblocks to affordable housing development.
And I also want to interact a bit with their different clients. Definitely a little less than Ellie did. But I think that that is just the nature of Addison Housing Works as an organization and their role as housing developer rather than a service provider. and getting to see that and making the connection cause we lived together over the summer between our experiences and how services, but also providing permanent housing are so intertwined was definitely a major theme that came out.
ML:
Was housing an issue that you had come across in classes before the internship? Was it an issue that was interesting to you before the internship?
EC:
Yes and no. In your class Inequalities of the American Dream, which I, I think I took the year before I had my summer internship. We were introduced to or we started reading the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond. And that’s based in Milwaukee, which is my hometown. And it was the first introduction that I had into what some of the real challenges that people are facing who are housing insecure and why they became housing insecure. I had grown up, I have grown up in Milwaukee, and so I never really thought more about why someone became housing insecure. I would just drive through some of the neighborhoods and have my own assumptions. And I think that really changed how I thought about people who were getting evicted or who were experiencing homelessness. But I don’t think I became very involved with the issue of housing and still having the experience of the Charter House and hearing about how there are so many individuals there that have full-time jobs who are making more than the minimum wage but still could not get housing who still had been at the Charter House for one or two years, even if they were actively looking for housing. And that part I just could not wrap my head around. And you know, through many conversations with the guests at Charter House and with the director and with our class reflection discussions, you know, it became so apparent that these ages all were revolved around the lack of housing in Addison County and beyond. You know?
FM:
Yeah. I definitely felt like in my classes housing, it wasn’t necessarily the central theme,
and that’s just the nature of the fact that so many issues are, exist in this world. And a lot of our class at Middlebury are very theoretical and can apply to the multitude of experiences that people have, but in a, I’m an IP major So we talk a lot about the 2008 global financial crisis, and I think that’s where I became the most knowledgeable about housing,but I sort of saw it as this very, like, commodified thing. and I think it’s important to see it in yes. in an academic light like that, but also see it in the real world as a, you know, a home for somebody, a sense of belonging what it is on an individual level and not what it is in the sense of you know, creating a, like mortgage backed securities and like, you know, financial contagion and a whole mess. So definitely like I saw a difference between what I learned in my internship and what, what has gone on in my classes.
ML:
So, you both had some understanding of the centrality of housing to questions of social and economic inequality. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, both on both the local scale and on perhaps a global scale.And even with the connections to the Desmond piece. Right. One of the things that Matthew Desmond says in Evicted is that we have really failed to appreciate how important housing instability and housing insecurity are to the creation of poverty that housing, uh, instability is both a cause and an effect of poverty and that is something that came up quite a bit in our summer reflections. Right. So you mentioned that you were living together for that summer, but, uh, we also had several other interns, in our, in our local internship program, uh, as well as several interns in our, in our national program. and one of the things that I like most about working with Privilege and Poverty is the chance every week during the summer to bring everybody together to talk about how your experiences are going. And you’re exactly right then with your cohort housing kept coming up. So whether students were working on food insecurity issues or when they’re working on domestic violence issues, whether they’re working on issues related to migrant health, housing was the thing that you all kept talking about. Uh, and that’s why, Ellie or Freddie in particular, I remembered that one day that we stayed a little after one of those reflections and you said, I wanna figure out some way to share the conversations that we’ve been having with the rest of the campus. That’s really the moment that I think ofas the origin story of the Clifford Symposium.
Why was it so important to you to extend the conversations that we were having as a P&P cohort to extend into the experiences that you were having in your internship with the rest of the campus community?
FM:
I think it was important because Privilege and Poverty in my internship with Addison Housing Works allowed me to understand and not shy away from the fact that there is a housing crisis and immense housing insecurity going on in Addison County which is a, a very rural place, a place that a lot of students don’t necessarily connect with as what their home town looks like, or you know, where they call home. And so I thought that it would be a good idea to, you know, find a way to make more students aware of what was going on and how it would, how it related to their lives. I think the college can sometimes be very separated from the town, even though we have things like the Privilege and Poverty program this is one of, you know, not very many ways to get involved, and it feels hard to get involved when you’re just, you know, a student trying to get through college. And so I felt like having an event of that sort would allow people to connect what they’re learning in their classes with what’s going on in the community sort of bring Middlebury back to, um, the place that it is in, and not just wrapped up in the global, world, which we seem to be wrapped up in, in a lot of our classes but make connections between what we see as the world’s most challenging problems, and how they might be going on in our own backyard.
ML:
For those of us who know you it is probably not surprising that you took on the most ambitious version of bringing these ideas back to campus. And some of the other ideas that we knew we discussed over the summer were, were smaller in scale. We talked about just doing a library exhibit or a library exhibit. We talked about maybe doing a session during the spring student, we talked about maybe having some kind of like takeover in different classes on a day where we asked faculty for the first five minutes of their classes to talk about affordable housing and housing instability. So there were different ideas floating around. But there was something about this ambitious three day symposium That’s the, academic kickoff for the school year that felt like it really captured your imaginations. Once you knew that it was a possibility of doing a Clifford why were you, why were you interested in joining on it?
EC:
Yeah. I think especially after my experience at the Charter House and going through the, we had a reflective class, a half credit class in the fall that following fall. I felt like I, I wanted to do something. We had been having conversations all summer. I’d seen these experiences that were happening in our own backyard, and I didn’t know exactly what I could do as a student at Middlebury College. And so when Freddie began talking about an idea of the symposium, I was very interested, one, as Freddie had mentioned, I think students were already talking about housing in some kind of way, and how it was affecting our Middlebury community mainly being that, the Grill and dining hall were having different closures because they didn’t have enough staff to support their hours that they wanted to have. And so I think students already felt, I would say fairly passionate about this, but weren’t specifically saying it was a housing problem. And so I felt like this was an issue that will really engage a lot of students, but also professors and community members in a way that I’m not sure any other issue could. And so I was really excited about it and I wanted to, to become involved
ML:
The way that we convinced other folks on campus that this was gonna be an, a potential issue that students will care about, that staff will care about, faculty will care about that would engage community members off campus was for the proposal process. So unlike some of those other things that we were thinking about as ways to, to connect those conversations to the rest of campus the Clifford Symposium required a full proposal where we had to convince members of the administration that both that we could do this work and that this was important work.
So let’s go back to the development of the proposal. What were the, what were the key things that we were putting into the proposal as we, as we collaborated on it that were really important to you?
FM:
I think just I mentioned a little bit before but connecting it back to why are we at Middlebury and why are we learning about things that we’re learning about? And what are the subjects that Middlebury students care about and how are they connected to this issue of a housing crisis and a sense of home? And I felt like in the proposal, especially because it started off more being this housing idea we needed to find a way to sort of bring that back to like how that intersects with all different disciplines. So housing is not gonna be brought up in your hard science classes, you know, explicitly or in your dance class, but what every student has in common is this idea of a sense of belonging. Um, and so I felt like that was a very important part to add into the proposal, was this idea of a sense of belonging and how that is intertwined with you know, the environmental movement, the migration crisis that our nation is going through and just our lives as students living on a college campus, a residential campus, and having different Communities that we call home.
EC:
Yeah. I think it also, like you were saying about for this multidisciplinary engagement with so many students, and I, I think it’s a issue that students from many different backgrounds
and interests can collaborate on and can and feel like they have some sort of piece or some sort of contribution that they can make to it based on their own experiences. I also think that we wanted to include community voices, and so, you know, we wanted to have a symposium where it wasn’t just an academic piece, but also bring in, you know, the real lived experiences of individuals who were affected by, and are affected by the housing crisis. and I think we did a pretty good job at intertwining the two.
ML:
Yeah. Definitely. I think that, well, you, that that moment when we figured out that it couldn’t be called housing, had to be called home. That was a big day. Yeah. Because I think it really allowed us to move from this being a P&P symposium, to P&P opening a campus conversation. and really finding some way that everybody would feel, or many more people would feel like they belonged. Yeah. To double down on that idea of belonging, and community involvement. And I really do recall some of those conversations, both in person and our many Google docs where, you, you kept reminding the faculty on the organizing committee that like, this can’t just be academic. This can’t just be theoretical. Mm-hmm. And I think especially like when I… what I kept thinking about the Clifford is the opening academic program of the year. Uh, there was some way there was supposed to be that intellectual kick-off Yeah. That I wanted that theoretical piece. Yeah. but that, I think one of the things that P&P shows, the experiential learning shows at the Center for Community Engagement shows, is that real stories of people’s lives can be the entry point to theoretical conversations. It doesn’t have to go that other way. And so I think that was a really great contribution that you were making to our organizing planning committee.
What were some of the specific events as we started putting together this calendar of three days of programs, what were some of the specific events that you thought would be really appealing to students?
EC:
I would say, I would say some of the panel discussions would be really interesting for students to be able to connect with policy makers in the state of Vermont, um, professors and just so many different individuals that have some you know, involvement with this issue would be really interesting for students. And I think we saw that in the two panels that we had on Friday afternoon. There was a lot of student engagement. Just watching some of these students vigorously take their notes during some of these panels was really encouraging to see. And having students come up to me after asking for the presentation slides and, um, you know, really feeling like they, they learned something from these panels.And I, I also was really encouraged to hear some of the very thought provoking questions that students asked. And they asked of these policy makers, which was a really cool space that we had created. And so I think the panels did a really good job. Not that that wasn’t, there were other great events that happened during the symposium, but I think the panels did really well.
FM:
Oh, I definitely agree about the panels but also the specific panelists and speakers that were invited by the planning committee. I think that those were some pretty great decisions, made especially Dr. Davarian Baldwin definitely I think allowed students to really think about the context that we live in as Middlebury students in a town where the college is the, I’m pretty sure it’s the largest employer in Town, um, second to the hospital. But beyond that, I really, what I really enjoyed was this, the dinner. The closing dinner that sort of allowed people to, we came off of the two panels that day and people had gotten a lot of information but they allowed people, they allowed me specifically, but I think others to, to connect with those that were coming from different places in the whole realm. So I was at a table, um, with some local leaders, a leader, Kevin Chu, who he leads the Vermont Futures Project, but I was also at the table with someone from Vermont Humanities, and then a couple of Middlebury professors and, you know, another Middlebury students. So hearing everybody’s perspective on this, was, was really interesting. ‘cause I felt like that can be a lot of polarization and having conversations together over dinner and talking about Gather and connecting it back to, you know, the Vermont stories and, was really powerful.
ML:
There was a moment because we were running around like wild for two days, before that dinner. And I, I remember also a moment when we just sat down at that dinner and I think Professor Davis just kind of called the room to order and set a tone for that event that brought the reflection that we had done during the summer. Yeah, back to the campus. I think that’s, that was the goal. Like, there was this moment where I just thought during that dinner, like, wow, we, we pulled it off. Yeah. I think we all, we all came together and did this thing that several months before just seems like a faint possibility to be honest. And one of the things that I keep hearing from people who were at that dinner, from people who were at the panel, from people who were at events throughout the weekend is that student involvement in this Clifford Symposium student engagement in this Clifford Symposium was one of the big reasons why it was so successful. You talked a bit about why you think student engagement and why this issue of housing in particular was something that would appeal to students. But what other ideas or advice do you have thinking back now, about why student engagement was so high this time?
EC:
I think that students were really involved because many students care about Middlebury and the community and the institution, and they want to see Middlebury College doing something. And I think what we did a really great job with with the symposium is we struck a balance between not blaming the school for their inaction or for potential actions that were harmful against the community, but also providing information on what the school could also be doing. And I think that really excited a lot of students because it, it gave hope to a lot of students that they, that they wanted to do something and and two, that their institution could be doing something and also that their institution was already doing something. So I thought we did a really good job at demonstrating that balance. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of students who were really excited to become a little bit more connected with the Middlebury community in that way whether that be through some sort of student engagement club that volunteers in the community or continuing these conversations.
FM:
I think also if you compare this symposium to symposiums in years past sometimes the symposium is seen too, as like too intellectual in a lot of ways and too academic and I think it turns some students off to it because, you know, it usually happens towards the end of the week and, you know, everybody’s going through their classes and some of these topics don’t feel very real to their daily lives. But we, we formulated an idea of the three of us and the rest of the planning committee that was applicable to everybody. Just the idea of belonging and home and housing, it’s applicable to every person on this planet. And so I think that that had a lot of to do with it, but I also think Middlebury students are pretty active and care a lot about a lot of issues. And I think we did a good a job of, you know, catering to the student mood of you know, being a little bit more active and, wanting to be out there in community these days and wanting to take action on issues.
ML:
I also remember the ways that you made sure that there were gonna be multiple ways that students could be involved. So as we were putting together the proposal, it wasn’t, you know, we had two panels Like, and two pretty academic panels. But we also had a breakfast at the Charter House Club organized, I remember you being really involved with that. We made sure that the SGA knew about a lot of the events, you were really involved with that. You both collaborated very impressively on the exhibits that were up in the library and in Bihall. So even just physical entry points into the content if you’re on the science side of campus, or if you’re in the data library, you’re going to know, some of the key fact about housing based on the posters that you had, you’re gonna hear some of those individual voices you want to bring in. So even just thinking about how, you know, what are the, what are the ways that students are gonna be navigating this space during the week leading up to it and then how can we take advantage of that to be able to recruit them to the events? Your perspectives on those kinds of issues were I think really critical, as well.
So one of the things that I was struck by during the symposium, you know, I kind of went into it expecting that a lot of the panelists were gonna say, we’re not doing enough, right? Mm-hmm. We have this housing crisis and like, it’s just something that we finally need to deal with. And actually, what a lot of them said was, we’re doing a lot. There are so many things in Addison County in the state of Vermont that we’re trying to do, to combat housing instability and housing insecurity and housing affordability. But there’s still a lot more to when you think about your next steps. But when you think about the next steps that other students can take what do you want to be thinking?
EC:
You know, I, we had this conversation the other day at dinner that we went to with some other P&P interns who had also helped us out with the symposium. And at least a common theme that came up for me was collaboration. And I think we can put our best foot forward as students if we collaborate across different student organizations instead of, I know there was an idea that floated around of creating a new club, but I think it would be more beneficial to collaborate across groups that are already working in the community, whether that be the Charter House Club or Midd Volunteers. Um, there are many that already do really incredible and crucial work for the Middlebury community that could partner together and I think would be a stronger force. and I think also just recognizing some, some of the, the actions and some of the jobs that have already been, excuse me, some of the work that has already been done, for the housing crisis. And there are so many people in the community that are doing so much like the direct service providers. And I think recognizing that is also really important. And I think we, we did a great job of that in the symposium.
FM:
I mean, something that my Privilege and Poverty internship showed me is there is I mean, Vermonters have a very positive outlook on issues, and it’s really, it’s really helpful in the way that they, come together as a community, There is a lot to be done still for just making sure that everybody has a home in the community. And it definitely has factored into what I care about. And also what I want to do with, you know, my life as, I’m a senior. And also I, I’m now doing a thesis about housing regimes in Europe. And that was not my planned trajectory freshman year. Yeah, I think definitely this whole symposium has made me think a lot about how are, how is what I’m going to do in the future related to helping others and that direct service component. And am I just going to forget about everything that I did during Middlebury? Am I going to bring that into my role? Am I going to stay in Vermont? Lots of questions. And honestly, it’s made me think a lot more about like, what am I gonna do? And like, become like a little bit more, I don’t really know. But I think that’s really, I, I’m kind of embracing that these days because I, I thought
before I came to Middlebury that I was gonna like go to college, become a lawyer, and do something related to government. And while I, I do think that I still want to do something in public service, I think that I’m just sort of going to embrace where I’m needed and where I can contribute. And the symposium and P&P internship really validated my want to help people and just feel involved.
ML:
That’s great. I know that we’ve been talking about the Clifford Symposium, specifically but hearing you both answer that question I was remembering back to both of your P&P interviews instead of any Clifford-specific things we talked about. Right. And so to, to hear the kind of full circle that you have notated with the P&P experience. Going back to those days when you were just thinking about whether this was something you wanted to do to now really being the examples of how P&P students but other students on Middlebury campus can do this in the future has been a real privilege for me to be able to work with you on. So thank you very much and best of luck with everything in the future.
EC:
Thank you. And thank you, Matt.
Privilege & Poverty
The Privilege & Poverty Academic Cluster (P&P) is a learning community that brings classrooms and communities together to address the causes and consequences of poverty and cultivate lifelong ethical participation in society. P&P students are placed in internships either locally in Addison County or nationally through the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP).

What students are saying about the P&P internship experience:
This internship was the most transformative two months of my life. Each day I learned something new about the law and its deep-rooted inequities, especially how it hurts marginalized communities in the South…The experience was especially impactful because it allowed me to apply my political science studies to real-world applications.
- Lizuly Meraz ’26, P&P Intern with Georgia Legal Services Program

This summer, I had the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant in the afterschool program at Americana World Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky. My responsibilities included planning and facilitating educationally enriching activities for youths from immigrant backgrounds and managing administrative tasks such as attendance tracking, course instruction, and field trip coordination. Reflecting on this internship, I believe it has significantly enhanced my understanding of poverty and immigration, and how these issues intersect with family education and youth development.
- Jessica Li ’26, P&P Intern with Americana World Community Center
Ellie Cady, Privilege & Poverty Intern
Privilege & Poverty intern, Ellie Cady, reflects on her summer internship with the Charter House.
Hello, my name is Ellie Katie, and I am an intern at the CC this fall. I also interned at the Privilege and Poverty Academic Cluster over the summer where I was placed at the Charter House, a low-barrier homeless shelter there. I worked on a variety of things, like supporting the shelter staff as well as the shelter guests. I also was able to sit in on some of the housing coalition meetings that different nonprofits across the county had, and this was really beneficial to gain a better understanding of some of the work that different nonprofits and service agencies are doing across the county to help support individuals who are housing insecure.
I am a psychology major with global health and Spanish minors, and this internship at the Charter House was something that I was initially interested in. I felt like it suited some of the skills that I already had, and I was in the process of exploring different potential careers that I might that I might have in the future. And that’s the beauty of the Privilege and poverty program because you were able to take some of the skills that you have and some of the interests that you have and find a job and an internship that really is suited for you. It really has provided a lot of guidance to me and what I want to do this fall. I’ve been able to continue some of that work as a CC intern and it connected me to so many different individuals across Addison County and in Middlebury. I felt much more connected to the town that I’m going to school in and even developed different relationships with people in the program.
When I first found out that I got the internship and I’d be in Middlebury, someone told me that living in Middlebury is during the summer is a magical time. And it really was. I was able to explore different areas of Vermont, get into open water, swimming. I’m a I used to swim and a swim team so I was able to start open water swimming at Lake Dunmore in the early mornings and explore different hiking trails and different swimming holes and also got to meet so many different people who are working here over the summer. There are so many people here over the summer, so it is wonderful. If that is something you’re worried about, don’t be. It has been such a lovely experience. It experience that I could not recommend it more. If you do have any questions about any part of the application process or even if you want to know more about the work of the Charter House where I worked over the summer, I created a comprehensive guide of the work that I did with different resources. I can pass it along if you want to review that before applying, but I’m also able to answer some more general questions as well. My email is e, o, c, a, d, y, and Middlebury dot edu. Again, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be happy to have a meeting or just answer some of your questions over email.
Good luck applying.

Do it. It’s gonna be awesome. You’re gonna learn so much and you’re gonna be able to see parts of Middlebury that you’ve never seen before… It can be hard to get off campus and it sometimes feels like J term and the summer are the only times that you can do that… But it’s really valuable to stay in Middlebury during these times, working off campus with people who are not just 19 and 20-year-olds who are in your shoes.
-Emma Henry ’25, P&P Intern with Open Door Clinic
Juntos
Juntos is a program that supports the migrant community in Addison County to offer essential services– like acquiring English skills and tools that promote independence— aiming to foster a community where migrants can lead a dignified life through advocacy.
As a first-generation student from an immigrant household where English wasn’t the first language, I understand the obstacles that can come with navigating higher education and other systems. Back home, I was deeply involved with the migrant community helping them find their way to higher education and supporting them through challenges… This experience encouraged me to look for something similar when I came to Midd, and I was able to find that in Juntos. Through Juntos, we are working to build lasting relationships with community allies and expand our reach so we can continue to support our surrounding migrant community.
Nancy Rivera ’26, Juntos President
What Came Out of "Pride Beyond Borders"
Arthur Martins `24.5, CCCE Grant Recipient for “Pride Beyond Borders”
I leveraged grant-writing skills I acquired through CCCE to source funding for a planned Observatory on Violence Against LGBTQIA Persons in Brazil’s Federal District … Most impactful, however, was the inspiring work of fomenting and executing the first-ever Pride March at Bom Despacho, a rural conservative town in the countryside of Brazil, where I lived for the past two months alongside my grandmother. It was then I truly put those cross-cultural and conflict transformation skills to test.
Read Arthur’s full reflection.
Newman Civic Fellows

Shivapriya “Priya” Nair ’24
2023-2024 Newman Civic Fellow
Priya’s first experience with community engagement at Middlebury College was through the CCE’s Community Connected Learning course, where she helped run BIPOC affinity spaces at Mount Abraham Unified High School in Bristol, VT. Priya was also involved in Language in Motion, and was a Community Connected Project Assistant for an Environmental Studies course. She won a Public Service Leadership Award in 2022, and was named Middlebury College’s 2023-2024 Newman Civic Fellow.
“Throughout all these experiences, the real shining impact in my life was all the impressive and uplifting friends and mentors I was meeting. I had electrifying conversations about social, environmental, and health justice with people who became my best friends.”

Patrick Kuruga Wachira ’23
2021-2022 Newman Civic Fellow
Patrick’s journey with the CCE started right with his first week on campus through his MiddView trip: Working Together to Effect Change. “I learned about Community Friends through my trip leader and I knew as soon as I heard about it that I would want to be a part of it.” After that, Patrick joined Community Friends as well as other CCE programs such as Language in Motion, Middlebury Alternative Break Trips, and Page One Literacy Project. Patrick was named Middlebury College’s Newman Civic Fellow in 2021-2022 and was awarded a Public Service Leadership Award in 2023 for his dedication to community engagement at Middlebury College.
“What I find most appealing to me about these programs is the opportunity to interact with people from the Middlebury community and beyond, particularly children and to spearhead and witness the wonderful results of celebrating diversity and increasing intercultural awareness.”

Alondra Carmona ’21
2020-2021 Newman Civic Fellow
During her time at Middlebury College, Alondra advocated for immigrant rights and took on various leadership roles in community engagement. She was the lead coordinator of Juntos, a student-migrant solidarity group and in 2019 led ten students on a Middlebury Alternative Break Trip in partnership with RAICES to San Antonio, Texas where they worked with individuals who had recently crossed the US-Mexico border. Alondra was named Middlebury College’s Newman Civic Fellow in 2020-2021.
“Growing up in a community of predominantly migrant Latinos, I have seen firsthand the mistreatment of such a community and how it can immobilize not just the individual but the family as well.”
Community Partner Spotlight
The Center for Community Engagement is fortunate to partner with a network of more than 200 organizations. While some are internationally based, many of these organizations are located right here in Addison County.

New Community Project
New Community Project (NCP) is one of our Community Partners with both a global and local presence working towards ecological healing and social justice. At the NCP’s Sustainable Living Center in Starksboro Vermont, a small but dedicated team of staff and many volunteers focus their efforts on finding local, sustainable solutions to address rural poverty, food insecurity, and energy poverty within the community. In the words of Pete Antos-Ketcham, the coordinator of the Starksboro Center, NCP is “a small organization with a big goal, which is to change the world.”
We had an opportunity to speak with Pete about the history of NCP, the work they do, and how Middlebury College students can help support their mission of creating a more peaceful world.
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Q: Can you share a bit about the New Community Project and your role?
A: NCP is a small nonprofit organization. It was founded in 2003 by David Radcliff, who was formerly with the Church of the Brethren in their World Programs Office in Elgin, Illinois. NCP works for social justice and ecological healing as a way of building a more peaceful and nonviolent world. So there are a lot of issues that tie into that, where social justice and the environment intersect.