Student Story

LaTia Glasgow

I did my practicum experience at the Julie Community Center, a small, community-focused space in Southeast Baltimore involved in advocacy, education, and organizing, with a special dedication to people on low or fixed incomes. The Julie Center places an emphasis on meeting people where they’re at. They might need food, clothing, or some job training. We help.

My undergraduate degree was a joint major in psychology and art. I’ve always loved getting to know people and helping them. I was drawn to the Julie Center for its work helping people access resources and support. I also resonated with its mission to foster individual and neighborhood pride, participation, and self-determination.

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and came to Baltimore for school. I’ve always been aware of how systems of oppression intersect to create negative outcomes for people. It’s what made me want to pursue a career with a sense of purpose. Those systems didn’t sit well with me and I wanted to make a difference. 

The Julie Center didn’t have a social worker on staff, so I got to pitch in and work together with them to find ways my training could be useful to their needs. I helped people build connections and set goals. I got their social media up and running and organized their calendar and newsletters. Then I helped their Youth Leadership Development program, where we hired a muralist, Jaz Erenberg, to work with the children. They designed a mural for the side of the center, and now, when you drive past you can see it. It gets to the heart of the center’s value and purpose in the neighborhood. It shows how resilient and powerful the people inside are. 

There’s a large Latino immigrant population in Southeast Baltimore, many people are undocumented and largely stay invisible to most residents of the city. You can see a sense of racial and economic segregation in the neighborhood that the mural is disrupting. In that context, the mural the children designed is so beautiful. It features a landscape with a rainbow, river, a tree, and a squirrel character. The feeling of abundance in the work embodies the qualities of a resilient community. It combats a sense of poverty and decline, and is about participation. The unveiling was very special and I came back to the Center after my practicum ended, to bear witness to it. I interviewed all the staff at the center and lit the fire to get the mural done. Together we got creative, and that’s what I want to do for a living: work with a group of people; get a curriculum set up that’s relevant to dismantling structural oppression and racism; be creative in making power visible. 

I also helped organize a food pantry with the local community. 

I went with students from Wolfe Street Academy–a nearby Baltimore public school–to buy food at the Safeway using grant money, and we bagged it up and delivered it to a group of local families. The pantry offers an open door to people who need food. Again, it is about meeting people’s needs as they express them. 

A challenging but instructive part of my practicum was that there wasn’t a clear path laid out. I had to find the opportunities that were relevant to me and be a self-starter. I was thankful for the support I received from the Center for Restorative Change as the intimate nature of the program meant I could talk my goals and challenges through with my practicum instructor to make sure I was working on projects in line with my social work interests. Prior to coming to the Center, I was in more structured, heavily supervised environments and going into more free-form advocacy was stimulating for me. My instructor also helped me get in touch with people who could help me deliver.