Kya Roumimper
Keene State College
Throughout her time at Keene State, Kya Roumimper has been involved with multiple activities and organizations focusing on community service. She participated in an Alternative Break trip to Guatemala and has led trips to Panama, Boston and Washington, DC. Through these trips, she has grown as an active citizen and helped her peers do the same. Kya is the Community Service Office Coordinator of Advocacy and Education; in her role, she works to engage fellow Keene State students in conversations and learning around critical social issues and social justice. This semester she is organizing a social justice summit open to students from around the region. She has been active in the Office of Multicultural Student Support and served as a leader during the multicultural retreat. Kya attended a Social Justice Training Institute and served as a site leader for Break Away's Alternative Break Citizenship School in Atlanta. Kya also presented at the IMPACT National Student Conference in 2014 and 2015. Kya has been invaluable as a peer educator on campus, has been an ambassador for Keene State across the country and abroad, and has made intentional efforts to increase our communities understanding of justice through myriad co-curricular and curricular efforts.
Personal Statement
As Coordinator of Education and Advocacy in the Community Service Office at Keene State College, I have had over three years of experience analyzing and identifying areas of educational need in the Keene community and on my campus. I have worked hard to improve my and my peers ability to address critical and complex social issues by doing things like education and reflection in the Alternative Break program to better prepare students to learn and serve with diverse communities; brought issue specific trainings to my campus like the Water Walk, Hunger Banquets, Diversity Trainings, etc; helped deliver large days of service and ongoing engagement initiatives to support students development as active citizens; presented at local and national conferences and have imagined and brought to life a social justice summit. The last four years have been spent learning and teaching others about social justice issues and how they can incite change in their communities.
The time I have dedicated to social justice at Keene State has helped shape my identity. I have a clear understanding of who I am, what I stand for, and what I can bring to the table. This soul searching has made approaching social justice that much more attainable. A better awareness of the space I take up has made giving space to others easier. This is one of the many reasons I engage in conversations around "identity" as an introduction to my diversity workshops.
My long-term career goals include education and advocacy roles in poverty and other inter-connected social justice issues because the need for education is always present. My experiences over the last four years have led me to believe that Keene State College is a phenomenal transition into real world advocacy and education work by finding interesting and didactic ways to engage communities in social justice initiatives. My work as a global citizen does not end at KSC because the social justice learning process is never over. I have every intention of continuing this work in my post-grad endeavors.
