Education and Engagement Committee
About the 2025 Education & Engagement Committee
The ARCH Conference is passionate about ensuring that students attending the conference have opportunities to practice the antiracist initiatives they were taught. To help facilitate this, we created the Education and Engagement (E&E) Committee. Members of this committee develop and lead their own antiracist community projects. Anyone who attends ARCH is free to join on these projects - developing resume-building skills and deepening their understanding of decolonizing white supremacy culture.
For the 2025 ARCH Conference, the Education and Engagement Committee turned their efforts towards three topics that greatly affect BIPOC communities: public health policy and advocacy, housing equity, and sustainability. In addition, they created educational reels on each project to raise awareness on these issues within their community.
Read more below about E&E's 2025 projects!
Public Health Advocacy & Policy Initiative Project
To learn more about anti-racism work within public policy and advocacy, E&E attended hospitality union Local 8’s workshop to understand the power of community mobilization in low-income and BIPOC workplaces. There, we were able to learn how to use storytelling to reclaim power and resilience in the face of in harmful systems of oppression.
E&E also partnered with Health Equity Circle to meet with legislators and lobby in Olympia for health equity, immigrant, and housing-related bills. We learned how to translate public health experience and research into tangible change, convincing several key legislators to vote yes to essential budget and regulatory bills.
We volunteered with Seattle Union Gospel Mission’s shelters, serving food and having impactful conversations with those experiencing housing insecurity. There, we learned how racism and systemic barriers contribute to the housing crisis, and the importance of community-based solutions. We also attended a teach-in and menstrual product drive for a women's shelter, learning how we can support current housing and women's equity bills.
Additionally, E&E conducted an educational interview with Poor Magazine, a BIPOC-led organization of houseless and formerly-houseless writers that Students of Color for Public Health (SCPH) has partnered with in the past. The committee is working to publish a video of this interview to Instagram alongside their volunteering experiences in order to destigmatize and humanize houselessness.
Destigmatizing Houselessness & Promoting Housing Equity Project
Given that houselessness is inherently systemic and targets BIPOC, especially those who are black or Indigenous, E&E focused their efforts on housing equity as a racism and public health issue.
Food Insecurity and Sustainability Project
As their third and final project, E&E focused their efforts on food justice as an environmental and public health crisis, and racism as a systemic barrier to food security. The committee organized a potluck dinner featuring discussions on dismantling racism in food systems as well as promoting sustainability, with partnerships and presentations from local leaders at the UW community. Collaborations include UW Food Pantry, UW Dirty Dozen, and ASUW Food Co-Op. E&E also toured UW’s hydroponic farm to learn about sustainable and equitable farming, eating, and food waste practices!
This project is currently underway! The potluck event will take place on May 13 from 6-8pm, with RSVPs here. Photos will be uploaded onto this site following the event.
Educational Videos Project
Given that one of the core goals of the Education and Engagement Committee is to raise awareness on how harmful systems impact the health of marginalized and BIPOC communities, and how we can mitigate these impacts, educational videos of each project were created. They are intended to not only share what accessible anti-racist work can look like in practice, but to foster community mobilization, conversations on anti-racism, and activism within the greater UW and University District Community. The reels can be found on the Students of Color for Public Health Instagram, @scphuw.