Cristina Martinez ’12 and Ceymi Doenyas ’12 were awarded Princeton ReachOut Fellowships for public service projects, the sponsoring foundation announced on Jan. 27.
Martinez received the foundation’s annual domestic fellowship for her plans to work with young adults transitioning out of foster care, and Doenyas received the international fellowship for her proposal to use technology to assist autistic students in her home country of Turkey.
The fellowships are awarded annually by Princeton ReachOut 56-81-06, which raises money from the Classes of 1956, 1981 and 2006 to provide graduating seniors with $30,000 each for a yearlong service project that they design.
Martinez, an anthropology major from Miami, Fla., will spend next year working with Bethany Christian Services in Philadelphia, Pa., to create a social support network for young adults moving out of the foster care system. She plans to recruit adults to serve as mentors and help expose former foster children to available resources as they transition into adulthood.
“It was exciting because I knew I’d be doing something that’s meaningful,” Martinez said. “It really is a dream job because you get to plan your own project and do something creative.”
Martinez is researching how former foster children go about forming friendships for her senior thesis. She concluded that they do not have the social support network that other young adults their age do.
She said she became interested in the U.S. foster care system during her internship this past summer with the Florida state attorney’s office, where she worked on a case involving the murder of a 10-year-old girl in foster care.
After completing her yearlong project, Martinez said she hopes to go to law school and specialize in child welfare. Ultimately, she said she hopes to be involved in shaping policy relating to foster care and adoption in the United States.
Doenyas, the winner of the international fellowship, plans to help a school for autistic children in Turkey integrate technology into its curriculum, using iPad applications designed specifically to aid in the education of autistic students.
“When she told me on the phone, I started crying,” Doenyas said of her reaction upon learning that she had won the fellowship.
A psychology major pursuing certificates in neuroscience and Near Eastern studies, Doenyas previously volunteered for the school where she plans to work in Istanbul, Turkey.
Doenyas learned that the Princeton Child Development Institute had determined that certain iPad applications provided exceptional educational opportunities for autistic children, but she realized that there had been no control study done to prove it. After completing her project, she plans to publish the findings.
Doenyas will be working with 10 high-performing autistic students at the 25-student school. She plans to use applications that are meant to improve the students’ attention capacities, their vocabularies, their engagement in conversation and willingness to speak. One of the applications, called "Look In My Eyes," helps them maintain eye contact during conversation.
“Language-learning is a big problem,” Doenyas said. “[The applications] help them engage with people when they’re communicating.”
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