Graduate Assembly - Equity And Inclusion Fundraiser

Want to make an impact on the lives of Berkeley graduate students? This semester, the Berkeley Graduate Assembly is raising funds for organizations making a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable Graduate Students: Graduate Student Parents and Disabled Graduate Students.

The Graduate Student Parent Advocacy Project (GSPA) is tasked with advocating for the needs of graduate student parents and developing programs to support their academic and personal success through community-building events, socials, and intentional and impactful event planning. Past and possible events include:

• Graduate student parent mixers / happy hours
• Professional development workshops for graduate student parents
• Providing privacy window screens for graduate student parents living at the UC Village
• Domestic Violence Prevention Month programming

The Disabled Students Advocacy Project (DSAP) has two main goals: to advocate on behalf of the needs and interests of disabled graduate students, and to create safe, welcoming spaces in which disabled, crip, neurodivergent, and chronically ill students can thrive, connect, and build community. 

In service of the first goal, the Project represents the needs of disabled graduate students in campus and community deliberation spaces, from committees that report to the chancellor to informal gatherings with community partners. In service of the second, the Project organizes panels, social mixers, and professionalization and support groups that may involve collaborations with the university, but which are fundamentally geared towards providing spaces for disabled students that allow them more autonomy and freedom than those governed overtly by the university. 

The Project would use the extra funds to support the involvement of disabled speakers, academics, activists, artists, and accomplices in its events and gatherings. Extra funding to support the direct compensation of these participants so that they are rightly paid for their labor, and at a rate that represents its value is crucial, but in short supply. Extra funds would have a direct and material impact on the Project's capacity to recruit these speakers, and thus a direct and material impact on its ability to forge and strengthen connections between disabled students and disabled community leaders. In doing so, it would increase the possibility of generating new ideas, collaborations, connections, and mentor-mentee relationships.

Please consider donating to make a difference in the lives of graduate students. Thank you!