Sahra Sulaiman

I am the South LA Writer for Los Angeles Streetsblog, a national daily news source connecting people to information about sustainable transportation and livable communities. Because I consider the ability to safely to access one's streets to be an essential component of a healthy and livable community, I regularly take on the obstacles to safe access to streets, including gang activity, gun violence, crime, race relations, economic hardship, hit-and-runs, and the profiling or harassment of youth by law enforcement and their impact on a community's well-being. I also work to introduce readers to the unique grassroots efforts residents, community leaders, and local organizations make to address some of these issues on their own. In doing so, I feel fortunate to have been able to open up lines of communication between city agencies and residents of an area of Los Angeles that has been neglected for too long.

An academic by training, I am an M.A. and A.B.D. in International Relations from USC. I was an atypical grad student, changing my focus yearly in an attempt to understand the interests of state and non-state actors in the international system, the constraints upon their ability to address transnational problems, and the impact of their policy responses on ground. To this end, I studied genocide, ethnic and civil conflict, forced migration, international humanitarian operations, international political economy, trafficking (human and drugs), and the role of non-governmental organizations in mitigating global problems. I finally settled on international development and spent a few summers in villages in Malawi tracking aid programs and the largely unproductive relationships between aid organizations and local communities.

My work as a volunteer mentor with at-risk youth in the LAUSD high schools over the past several years has given me both unique insight into the challenges faced by lower-income youth of color across Los Angeles and unique access to their communities. The resilience with which so many of these youth struggle to transcend overwhelming odds inspired the Fatherless Teen Fathers project, a documentary photography project in which I track teens as they do their best to become good fathers despite their own fathers' absence from their lives. The trust I've built with them over the years also makes it easier for me to probe questions about the consequences of living in violence-plagued communities for the teens, their families, and their neighbors -- the basis of the project I will be pursuing for this fellowship.