Summer Service Grant

The Summer Service Grant provides funding to QuestBridge Scholars for a summer project that demonstrates scholarship, leadership, and service.

We are pleased to announce the 2016 Summer Service Grantees:

Mariely Garcia

Bowdoin College, Class of 2017

Himalayan Health Initiative
As an aspiring physician with an interest in health disparities, Mariely cares deeply about making quality healthcare services and knowledge available to all people. She believes that one of the greatest injustices of our time is the reality that good health is oftentimes a privilege awarded to a select few. This summer, she worked with a grassroots organization in the small Indian town of Gorubathan to help develop and implement a formalized health awareness program for the youth of the community, assist in the daily health and education programming of the daycare center operated by the organization, and help in efforts to attract supporters.

Irina Gavrilova

Yale University, Class of 2017

Cultivating Tension and Conflict on the Irish Stage​
This summer Irina split her time between Dublin and Cambridge, studying the role of Irish theatre in shaping the country's conception of nationhood. With #WakingTheFeminists movement for gender equality in Irish theatre as her case study, Irina spent a month in Dublin interviewing students, artists, managers, and designers, attending the All Performing Arts Conference, studying theatre productions, researching related grassroots movements, and visiting commemorative events dedicated to the Easter Rising centenary. Irina then studied abroad in Cambridge, where she focused on the cultivation of tension and conflict on the Irish stage, completing a project comprised of 5 essays focused on different aspects of her research in Ireland. Irina's goal is to later develop the material she has gathered into a play.

Ryan Gourley

Brown University, Class of 2017

Jazz behind the Iron Curtain: Preserving the Legacy of a Forgotten Generation of Musicians
During the Soviet regime, many musicians influenced by American jazz remained underground. Those who published their music did so with a socialist state record company, accepting strict censorship along Soviet party lines. Today, recordings of jazz from the former USSR and Eastern Bloc have emerged onto the world stage. Through his research, including visits to jazz hubs in these regions, Ryan attempts to preserve the jazz music culture from this era by creating an informational website in both English and Russian. Visitors will step into a 360° panorama in and around former Soviet Jazz clubs, listen to previously unpublished recordings, and learn with an interactive music map.

Sydney Osifeso

Stanford University, Class of 2017

Pushed Out: Queer People of Color and Gentrification in Harlem
This summer, Sydney collected testimonies from low-income queer people of color in New York City who have been displaced from their homes and communities or who are at risk of being displaced. She will use these narratives that explore the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with systems of gentrification to produce an audio documentary that highlights untold stories and the urgent need for political action that calls for affordable housing and the protection of Harlem’s legacy of queer resistance, activism, and art.

Roxana Rodriguez

Williams College, Class of 2017

Underlying Realities of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro: A Preservation and Research Project with Davida
Davida is a Brazilian non-governmental organization in Rio de Janeiro that works on HIV/AIDS prevention and tries to improve the working conditions of sex workers in Brazil. As a summer intern Roxana dedicated her knowledge and skills toward the preservation of over thirty years of archived Davida activist history and toward contribution to a research project on the effects of the 2016 Summer Olympics on sex workers. Roxana’s tasks included ethnographic research, archive preservation, and health education outreach that will be applied to a greater understanding of megaevents and their health consequences around the world.

Nathaniel Tran

Tufts University, Class of 2017

A.C.E.: A Community-Based Approach to Breast Cancer Prevention
After interning at the South End Community Health Center and encountering women who had not received a mammogram in over ten years, Nathaniel researched the barriers preventing these women from receiving a basic screening mammogram. The primarily Spanish-speaking, low-income patient population noted that the language barrier, inconvenient location, time constraints, and lack of culturally competent care were to blame. The A.C.E. project collaborated with Dana-Farber’s Mammography Van (DFMV) to provide screening mammograms to underserved women in Boston neighborhoods by bringing the mobile technology to patients, creating a sense of community in healthcare, and empowering women through health education.