San Diego State’s Sage Project partners with El Centro to tackle homelessness
News 11's Vanessa Gongora spoke with the Director of the Sage Project about what's to come.
EL CENTRO, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - The San Diego Sage Project is partnering with the city El Centro for the spring semester to help mitigate the difficulties confronting the homeless.
The Sage Project partners with local governments and other community organizations to tackle projects that are high priority for them.
El Centro was put on the radar by colleagues from the SDSU Imperial Valley campus. David Kanaan, chair of the division of professional studies, as well as the Associate Dean Salvador Espinosa had connections with the city of El Centro and wanted to help get the El Centro project off the ground.
The Director of the Sage Project, Jessica Barlow, has been wanting to work with the Imperial Valley campus since they've started in 2013 and also connect with cities in Imperial County.
"We're doing it finally. I'm thrilled. I'm hoping this continues to grow," Barlow said.
When the Sage Project works with cities, they ask what project the city needs help with. They then match those projects with faculty on campus and their students, who then works on these projects through their coursework.
In this case, El Centro Councilmember, Cheryl Viegas Walker says El Centro chose to tackle homelessness because they feel it's a high priority.
"We get more calls with regard to homelessness than any other issue facing us and let's tackle that problem," Walker said.
The city of El Centro already had a strategic plan to address this issue and the Sage Project will be providing more assistance to accomplish their goal.
"Things are already in the works and we're just adding capacity to help them address homelessness from a variety of different perspectives," Barlow said.
The El Centro Sage Project is working with three classes this semester. Students participating in the class will be working on this project hands-on.
In Administration and Public Policy Development, the class will analyze effective policy tools used by similar cities to address homelessness.
In the course, Investigation and Report, students are researching best practices used by local governments to address homelessness in cities with a comparable geographic, socioeconomic and demographic make-up.
The Writing for Spanish Language and Latino Media Journalism class will create multimedia stories about the history of the homelessness crisis in El Centro and its possible solutions.
By the end of the spring semester the Sage Project will have collaborated and put together reports and solutions that will then turn into a final, deliverable for the city during the summer. Depending on how well the city likes the partnership, Barlow hopes they can go forward and grow it to something bigger.
