This post originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cyrus Moulton.
For Brittany Chambers, Northeastern University's Ujima Scholars program provided community.
“It just all goes back to community again,” Chambers says.
For Pabel Martinez, the program offered an opportunity.
“They found potential where others saw doubt,” Martinez says. “Without Ujima I would not be where I'm at today.”
The Ujima Scholars program was founded in 1972 as a partnership among the John D. O'Bryant African African American Institute, the Department of African-American Studies, and Residential and Cultural Life, and provided academic, social and financial support to inner-city students attending Northeastern.
About 10 years ago, the program became the Ujima Global Leaders Program, focused on developing leaders for an increasingly diverse and complex world. Ujima Global Leaders are supported by a scholarship in recognition of their accomplishments and their potential to become agents for positive change in both our local and global communities.
Northeastern Global News recently caught up with Chambers and Martinez, both members of the class of 2013, to see how the Ujima program has shaped their lives.
Both credited the program with providing them with a strong base on which to build future success.
Martinez calls it the start of a “domino effect” that continued with his co-op experience, to jobs in technology and technology sales, to his current role as CEO and founder of Plurawl, a community-based learning platform that encourages workers to be their authentic selves.
Meanwhile, Chambers referred to the program's very name—Ujima is a Swahili word meaning collective work and responsibility—as paramount to her role as a manager in corporate social responsibility at Verizon.
“Ujima means collective work and responsibility—that transcended to my career,” Chambers says.