August 2024
Stéphie-Anne Dulièpre
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Congratulations to our Star of the Month for August 2024, Stéphie-Anne Dulièpre from the Bloomberg School of Public Health! Stéphie served as SOURCE's Social Justice and Reflection Program Assistant in 2023-24, and has been doing outstanding work to support our community storytelling project, "Health (In)Justice in Baltimore". She is also actively collaborating with others on campus to advance justice within our walls here at Hopkins. Read our interview below to learn more about her experience working toward justice in our Baltimore and Hopkins communities!
Can you share a little background about your work on the "Health (In)Justice in Baltimore" collaborative storytelling project?
My work with "Health (In)Justice in Baltimore" started back in September of 2023 when I first took on my role as Social Justice and Reflection Program Assistant at SOURCE. Rosemary shared with me the proposal for the project, and I immediately connected with the mission. In addition to preparing for the launch of this project, I had the opportunity to visit the launch of another storytelling project in Baltimore from the joint partnership between Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm and Morgan State University. I was able to really absorb how impactful such a project can be for the community and for the organizations that are doing important work to uplift their city. Once I got a chance to familiarize myself with The Facing Project process, we hit the ground running. Rosemary worked to recruit members of the steering committee and we both worked side by side to establish a process for running the program. I designed the flyers and helped to set up registration forms and not long after we started advertising, did we start to get really passionate individuals ready to become storytellers or writers. I took care of managing our writing pairs and guiding them throughout the process while also helping to ensure our steering committee members had all the information they needed to serve as coordinators, editors, or in whatever capacity they could. I can happily say that we're now so very close to sending the book to print and I could not be more excited to see these powerful stories see the light of day.
How does your work on "Health (In)Justice in Baltimore" complement what you’re learning in the classroom?
I came to Hopkins specifically to focus on justice work and in particular environmental justice. The work of this project speaks directly to me because it not only focuses on work that I'm passionate about which is helping to bring light to injustices as a way to help resolve health disparities, but it also allows me to use skills I brought in such as facilitated dialogue to help navigate difficult moments because it's very sensitive work. Most of my courses at Hopkins involved food systems, environmental justice, disaster response, etc. All topics that have impact on health injustices.
What other student groups or community service activities were you involved with in 2023-24? Are there currently any activities where you are participating, or where others can get involved?
Of the groups at Hopkins I was most involved in was the Black Graduate Student Association at BSPH. I served as secretary but was also a very vocal activist through BGSA for topics such as protection of DEI and faculty and students of color. As part of this work, I was involved in the submission of an open letter to all of Hopkins Leadership regarding harm being done to one of our brilliant faculty members. The letter can be found here: https://bit.ly/DEIatJHU. This was also covered by the Baltimore Banner. I also began other initiatives such as a coalition focused on financial disparities among master students where I surveyed students and published the results to Hopkins leadership in hope of removing the stigma of financial difficulties by speaking up about it and addressing once and for all the heavy financial burden faced by many students. This letter can be found here: https://bit.ly/MasterFinHealth. Although I graduated in May of this year, I am still very much actively involved in advocacy at Hopkins and welcome anyone to reach out if they would like to join any of the active coalitions working to fight for justice whether it is to protect DEI, to increase representation, to uplift Baltimore, or to fight for financial or food insecurity here.
What advice would you give other JHU students looking to connect with their classmates and peers who want to serve our community?
First thing I would advise is to spend time to understand and listen to whatever that community is that they want to serve. Before even thinking what they can do for that community, they can look for community activities and start showing up to listen and be present. When you do this, you will start to see what it is you may be helpful in, and sometimes the way you can help is by bringing someone else who can be of more help to that community. You might simply be a connection and that's ok. We don't have to be the main characters in other people's stories. Baltimore has so many amazing things to offer and one of the best things we can do is working to uplift all of that and be an amplifier for all of those working hard on the ground to change their city. I know many students come from other states or countries and will only be here temporarily, but I hope for any student who is interested in getting involved in the community to give themselves the opportunity to fall in love with this city and join the work to continue to improve it for everyone living here, whether Black, Brown or white, rich or poor, old or young, LGBTQ+ or not etc. Everyone here deserves an equal opportunity to thrive.
What is the most important experience you’ve had or lesson you learned working with our community?
The community is tight knit and closer than we may think. Before my time as a student at Hopkins, I was heavily involved in the outdoor scene in Baltimore, and it turned out that some of the friends and connections I made there were part of the community organizations we worked with on this project at SOURCE. Don't take the smallest connections for granted. Making those connections mean the world to me and I realize that above all, that's the most important part of any work I ever do, the people I have the pleasure of knowing and working with.