Week One: Introductions – Detroit Community-Engaged Research Program

Week One: Introductions

Greetings! My name is Dahika Ahmed (she/her/hers) and I am a rising junior majoring in Psychology with potentially minoring in Gender and Health. I am a Bengali-Muslim American as well as a proud daughter of a single mother. I was born in Detroit and raised in Hamtramck, a diverse and predominantly immigrant-populated city within Detroit that is essentially described as “the world in 2 square miles.” With that being said, Detroit has always been in my heart.

To me, “community” is a support system. It involves people who share the same struggles and work together to uplift each other and the environment around them. There may be ups and downs, but they share the experience together. This is part of the reason in why I chose to do community work in Detroit, I wanted to learn how communities uplift one another, and especially how they work together. While attending high school in Detroit, I became familiar with some of the issues in the city, but I wanted to learn more about how different communities address them. DCERP was my opportunity to do just that.

A skill that I have that will help me with my project is my knowledge of research. I’ve been involved in research for a while, specifically with social psychology, and I think it would really help me with my current project with Friends of Parkside. The non-profit is dedicated to assisting the needs and well-being of the residents of the Village of Parkside (located in Detroit’s East side) and I am assigned to conduct and implement evaluations for their annual Health Fairs. I feel honored (and a little overwhelmed) that they trust me to handle this task well for them. I hope that throughout this summer, I would be able to strengthen my skills in research and in making connections with dedicated people. I would be especially proud if, by the end of this program, I was able to leave a good impression on the dedicated people of Freinds of Parkside.

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