Meet the Civic Scholars – Class of 2015

Ebony Easley

Ebony’s interest in service dates back to her boarding school days in Connecticut, a time when the values of selflessness were instilled in her through the school’s motto “not to be served but to serve.” Ebony took advantage of the civic engagement opportunities offered by her high school and spent summers interning at non-profit organizations. Educational inequalities became a passionate topic for Ebony. To date she has participated in two alternative spring breaks teaching English in public schools in the Dominican Republic and has also spent time teaching English to immigrants in NYC. She serves in as many ways as possible- working on anti-hunger campaigns, participating in LBGTQ equal rights initiatives, and advocating for gender equality. At Penn, Ebony works with the Netter Center as the Fellows’ Coordinator for the Access Science program and also works as a research assistant at the Mixed Methods Research Lab with Family Medicine and Community Health. After a summer in Guatemala, Ebony continues to carry out research on diabetes’ management.

Estee Einhorn

Growing up in San Diego, Estee was constantly surrounded by Spanish speakers. At her local public high school she realized that many students were struggling to keep up with the rest of the class because they didn’t speak adequate English. Soon after this realization, Estee founded Amigos en Ingles, a tutoring and mentorship program at a domestic violence shelter near the Mexican border. Estee and the 20 other devoted bilingual volunteers spent every Thursday helping children with their homework, teaching them English, and being there for them as role models and companions. In addition to Amigos en Ingles, Estee was the chair of Hand Up, a teen-run youth food pantry partnered with Jewish Family Services. Estee has also been a member of the National Charity League for six years, and has spent time volunteering at her local senior center organizing games and activities to keep seniors active in their community.

Rachel Hirshorn

During Rachel‘s high school years, she served as a member of her school’s Community Service Advisory Board (CSAB).  She paired her CSAB work with direct service, volunteering weekly at the Henry Ittleson Center for Child Research and Day Treatment in the Bronx.  Rachel not only tutored and taught music, arts and crafts, and sports to boys and girls with severe learning disabilities, but also performed a periodic analysis of each resident’s progress.   Rachel was also one of the four student members of her school’s Public Purpose Task Force, which worked on multiple fronts to reinvigorate the school’s commitment to service learning.  During her senior year, Rachel co-taught a freshman course called Introduction to Community Service.  She created lesson plans on social justice issues and led corresponding monthly service projects.  Rachel also participated in her school’s Environmental Club, worked as a tutor at its Math Center, and was a member of a cyber-mentoring club for disadvantaged children from a bilingual public school. At Penn, Rachel plans to major in either biology or health and societies with hopes of going to medical school.

Robert Hsu

Robert is a budding public health advocate and researcher.  In high school, he involved himself in public health initiatives related to obesity and heart disease through the organization he founded, the Northville Health Awareness Society, and his position as a Youth Advisory Board Member for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.  At Penn, Robert is the volunteer director for Penn Fitness for Life, a project leader through Social Impact Consulting, a biweekly columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Campus Health Initiatives intern at Student Health Services.  He is also a research assistant for Professor Karen Glanz, who specializes in obesity prevention.  Combining his love for community engagement and public health, Robert started the Healthy Food Truck Initiative this past year, a partnership with food trucks in Philadelphia to promote healthier meals and to provide nutritional information to customers.  One day, Robert hopes to receive a Ph.D. in public health so he can continue making the world a healthier place to live.

Joanna Kamhi

Joanna’s interest in civic engagement dates back to her involvement with the 2008 presidential election.  Seeing a need to increase civic engagement among youths, she founded the Youth Activists Project (YAP) in her home state of Vermont.  At Penn, Joanna can generally be found at the Penn Women’s Center.  She serves as the Chair of ASAP (Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention), a violence prevention and education group that raises awareness about sexual violence and promotes feminism on campus.  She is also a board-member for the Women In Leadership Series and an active member of the Allies group on campus.  Joanna interned for the Women’s Law Project this past summer and continues to volunteer for the nonprofit, where she informs women and men about the law, legal procedures and resources and services available to them.  Joanna is majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and minoring in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.  She hopes to attend law school and one day advocate for women and the LGBTQ community as an attorney.

Duong Ly

In 2008, Duong‘s family immigrated to Philadelphia from Vietnam.  At his neighborhood school, he and several of his peers experienced racial harassment from other students.  Duong and his friends responded in the winter of 2009 by launching an eight day boycott against the administration to protest their inaction in protecting students’ physical and emotional well-being.  The boycott eventually turned into a lawsuit against the school district, with the U.S. Department of Justice ruling in favor of the targeted students. The following fall, Duong co-founded the Asian Student Association of Philadelphia, seeking to empower Asian American youth to become leaders in their schools and communities.  Since then, he has attended nation-wide conferences for youth activism.  Recently, Duong was invited to an anti-bullying conference hosted by the White House.  He was also recognized for his efforts with the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, Philadelphia Magazine’s 2010 “Heroes of the Year” award, and the 2011 “Hope for Future Generations” award.  He is currently a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Sociology with a concentration in Structures of Opportunities and Inequalities, and minoring in Asian American Studies.  He wants to pursue a career in education and stay involved with the Viet community in Philadelphia for as long as he can.

Dhruv Maheshwari 

Dhruv first joined the fight for educational equity four years ago as a volunteer at his school’s tutoring program for low-income middle school students. Inspired by classes at his private school, Dhruv developed curricula that pushed students to think creatively about what they were studying. After two years as a tutor, he launched a science program for low-income students, “Einstein Explorations.” Although he started the program as a free summer science camp, it grew into a sustainable after-school enrichment program, with a team of 10 high school mentors serving over 80 students. During the developmental phase of Einstein Explorations, Dhruv worked with the nonprofit Next Generation Scholars to arrange meetings with local government leaders He also attend several conferences, including “Teachers 4 Social Justice.” At Penn, Dhruv will be part of the Jerome Fisher M&T Program, where he will be working toward two degrees in business and computer science. He hopes to find an intersection between business, technology, and education so that he can continue fighting for educational equity.

Katherine Mateo 

Katherine has been involved in an array of community service projects that date back to her seventh grade year, when she produced a documentary about the high school dropout rate in the Latino community. In high school, Katherine worked with Leonard Finkelstein, a former regional superintendent in Pennsylvania, to found an organization called Global Youth United (GYU). As a chapter of a larger umbrella organization, GYU seeks to educate high school students in the Philadelphia community about politics and social justice through peer education, organized community service projects, and social entrepreneurship. In the past two years, GYU has helped raise funds for the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, and has run a campaign to benefit women in third world countries. At the University of Pennsylvania, Katherine is a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and part of the Integrated Studies Program. She anticipates majoring in International Relations.

Elana Stern

Elana has extensive volunteer experience both in her New Jersey hometown and on an international level. Her service career dates back to her sophomore year of high school, when she directed and performed in her high school’s first annual Dance Benefit for Breast Cancer Awareness to raise funds for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Elana has also worked extensively with Friendship Circle, an organization which pairs mentally and physically disabled children with mentors through summer camps and other programming. Recently she spent a year volunteering abroad. During her time in Israel, she taught English at an elementary school, worked at a gan, or daycare, for Sudanese refugees, and held a position at a medical center for terminally ill disabled children. Elana also spent time in Rwanda, teaching English and French, helping to tutor students after school, and volunteering in various rural communities. Elana hopes to continue to share her love of service with others at Penn as she begins a course of study in international development and French.