Farah Amjad ’16 and Clarissa Kimmey ’16 awarded ReachOut fellowships

Farah Amjad ’16 and Clarissa Kimmey ’16 were awarded the 2016 fellowships from 56-81-06 ReachOut Domestic and International Fellowships. Amjad received the 195 ReachOut International Fellowship and Kimmey received the ReachOut 56-81-06 Domestic Fellowship.

They will each receive a $30,000 stipend funded by alumni in the graduating classes of 1956, 1981 and 2006 for year-long public service projects following graduation.

The fellowship aims to support individuals who will fulfill the goal of serving others, fellowship founder Jim Freund ’56 said. He added that there were eight contenders for the fellowship this year.

Amjad, a history concentrator from Woodland, Calif., said that she will use the stipend to partner with Sarah Sayeed ’90, who is a senior adviser in the New York City Mayor’s Office. One of the projects she will be implementing is a “Muslim Civil Society Expansion Project” that will provide Muslim immigrants, women, and other disenfranchised members of the community access to “needed resources and networks for integration into the city,” through local faith community leaders and organizations, she explained.

While Amjad’s project is based in New York, it was considered to be international because of its focus on Muslim immigrants,the ReachOut board explained in a press release.

Amjad explained her interest in working with Muslim immigrants and women stems from her fascination with the intersectionality of American and international law. Following her internship, she plans to attend law school and focus on human rights and international law, she added.

Kimmey, a Woodrow Wilson School concentrator from Whiskerville, Pa., explained that her project proposal was to partner with Equal Justice Under Law, a non-profit organization that provides pro bono legal services to those in need. She noted that her goal is to promote pre-trial reform for incarcerated peoples.

In her proposal she wrote that she would “work with city officials in states where Equal Justice Under Law has successfully abolished money bail in order to further reform without litigation” and “conduct investigative work on the new practices implemented by cities in Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana and Mississippi,” she explained

“It really goes back to the clients I met in my internships, who were incarcerated for months at a time because they were unable to pay the bail in a process that really significantly impacted his life,” Kimmey said.

She said that prison reform has been a huge focus throughout her University career, adding she has been the co-president of Students for Prison Education and Reform since 2015. According to Kimmey, during her time at the University, she tutored through El Centro, a Hispanic community center and the Petey Greene program, interned with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender and worked as an Oscar S. Straus II Fellow in Criminal Justice for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. She added that she plans on attending law school, with the goal of addressing racial and economic injustices in the American legal system.

Fellowship adviser Sarah Lederman ’81 noted the quality of the proposals for this years was very high.

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She added that while she wished all of the projects could be funded, the board wanted to support projects that could be achieved and seemed feasible within the donated amount of money. The candidates were evaluated on whether their proposed project identified an urgent need and laid out a very practical plan for addressing this need.

Freund said he found both Amjad and Kimmey’s projects to be very timely, which helped distinguish them from the other applicants. Freund also added that the ReachOut fellowship differs from other fellowships of its kind, because it emphasizes the impact projects have on the communities, rather than the individual.

“There are benefits to the individual who wins; each previous awardee has told us that. But that’s not the purpose of it. The purpose of it is to serve others and do something of a public service nature. The benefit to the individual is secondary,” said Freund.

This is the 16th year of the fellowship’s existence, according to Freund.

Lederman added that she would like to see the fellowship expand in the future, to give other students an opportunity to contribute to their communities, although the fellowship is still dependent on donations.