The University of Maryland’s Urban Equity Collaborative (UEC) recently celebrated the completion of its first year of work. Supported by a Grand Challenges Grant and co-led by Dr. Willow Lung-Amam (School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation), Dr. Nancy Raquel Mirabal (College of Arts and Humanities), and Dr. Devon Payne-Sturges (School of Public Health), the UEC is committed to strengthening community-based institutions and creating solutions for urban inequity through community-based research and policy action.
In its first year, the UEC launched the Community Fellows program, a funded one-semester fellowship that collaborates with community activists and researchers to develop solutions for urban displacement. The 2024 UEC Community Fellows tackled immigrant rights advocacy, small business support, and tenant advocacy. In addition, the UEC organized five community talks and workshops and two training sessions on interdisciplinary/trans-disciplinary/multidisciplinary research to support urban equality. The workshops fostered interdisciplinary discussions engaging not only academics, but community members and practitioners working on the ground.
The UEC is entering the 2024-2025 academic year with a refined focus on the climate crisis and community dispossession and displacement. This lens offers a unique opportunity to examine the areas in which the multiple compounding inequalities within the foci of immigrant rights, quality affordable housing, and small business displacement, intersect.
The UEC is hosting a virtual workshop on Wednesday November 13, 2024 from 12:00-2:00pm with Kelly Leilani Main, the Executive Director and Founder of Buy-In Community Planning, a national 501c3 organization providing equitable and accessible voluntary relocation services for communities on the frontlines of irreversible climate impacts.
External partners and UMD community members are invited to subscribe to the UEC newsletter to learn more about upcoming workshops and research updates.
For more information, visit: https://urbanequitycollab.org/