Language, Literacy, and Culture PhD candidate Amy Pucino ’15 was profiled by Diverse on September 18th for her volunteer work with UMBC’s Refugee Youth Project (RYP).
Pucino spoke with the magazine about her personal experience with aiding a family of Iraqis who fled their country during the Iraq War and relocated to Baltimore. She helped the family on issues ranging from English tutoring to navigating the city’s institutions in order to help them obtain housing and health care. The experience inspired Pucino to base her dissertation on “the relationships between Iraqi refugees and those who play an educational role in their lives.”
“Through working with the family, I’ve picked up that the Iraqi population is an increasing population across the U.S. It’s our social responsibility to figure out ways to better serve the increasing population here. It taught me the importance of the need to work better with diverse communities. I wanted to do research that had some sort of practical application,” she said.
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