Alison Trianfo: Learned to Value Difference by Helping Others

Nov 1, 2016

Alison came to Xavier for two reasons: the Philosophy, Politics and the Public honors program and the Community Engaged Fellowship.

"I wanted a political science program and a service program, and the Community Engaged Fellowship was the only service program I could find with a scholarship," she says.

"I also liked the community aspect of the fellowship. We have a cohort of people who are dedicated partners and are all actively engaged. I like it because it keeps us accountable to one another. I'm inspired by others who are inspired by their topic and will dig deeper into their own."

Alison graduated in December and is now in the Private Interests and Public Good graduate program at Xavier. Her service sites during her senior year were at St. Francis de Sales Catholic School near Xavier and Education Matters, where she helped tutor immigrants in reading and writing English.

Though she has graduated, she is still involved in Mini Muskies, an after-school program she organized for third to fifth grade girls at St. Francis de Sales. They planned craft projects for the girls with a learning component, such as creating flags of different countries they studied to learn about different cultures.

She also loved tutoring immigrants at Education Matters. That's where she learned the importance of being open to differences among people from different places, and understanding there is so much more to a family and a community and what it means to be human and American. She feels she learned more from them than they from her.

"If we're going to make a real difference and change the way we open opportunities for kids and families and immigrants, it starts with being the person who's there making the relationships. I want to see these things happen, so I have to be there doing it and shaping how we make this city and country a place they can grow up in with better opportunity and so immigrants are not stuck in a vicious poverty cycle," she says.

"At Xavier there is really a community reaching out and making connections to empower people and it starts with people being there to bridge those connections."