2026-2027 Dwight Hall Urban Fellows: 22 Fellows Learn by Serving

Since 1994, the Dwight Hall Urban Fellows program has enabled a select cohort of Yale students to undertake a paid fellowship with a local service organization for a full academic year. Fellows dedicate approximately six hours per week to their project, collaborating with professionals at agencies and organizations and building practical experience while advancing their placement site’s mission. This year, 22 fellows are serving with projects that range from providing equitable healthcare to supporting tenants navigating the dispute resolution processes with their landlords.

As one of this year’s Urban Fellows, I have worked with the Center for Children’s Advocacy’s Immigrant Children’s Justice Project—the largest children’s legal rights organization in New England—translating documents and conducting country-condition research for unaccompanied minors navigating the increasingly fraught immigration system in the United States. I have worked on immigration cases for unaccompanied minors under the supervision of attorney Sabrina Tavi, who represents unaccompanied minors who may not otherwise have any legal representation. My work has focused on country condition research outlining the dangers our clients would face if they were returned to their country of origin. This research allows the court to make more informed decisions about a child’s case. I have also worked interpreting English and Spanish to allow clients to communicate with their attorneys, translating documents from Spanish to English, and drafting affidavits for clients.

The Urban Fellows cohort is supervised by Mark Fopeano, Dwight Hall’s Director of Programming and Evaluation, and Yair Guijosa-Torres ’27 and Rita Malallah ’27, the Urban Fellows student Co-Coordinators. “Urban Fellows is a key program that helps students establish professional skills and real-world experience on their pathway to public purpose,” Fopeano explained. “Students create projects in partnership with the New Haven community, and over the course of the year, students build the capacity at their community partner to fulfill their mission statement,” he added.

Guijosa-Torres began his work with the Urban Fellows program two years ago as a fellow with Havenly, a New Haven nonprofit supporting refugee women with employment opportunities and economic resources. “We created publications and posts to highlight their stories with a sort of oral history project shining light as to how the organization came to be,” Guijosa-Torres explained. After serving as an Urban Fellow, Guijosa-Torres became the program’s Co-Coordinator, developing a curriculum to establish community among the fellows. Guijosa-Torres worked with the fellowship cohort over the summer to ensure that everyone could begin their work early in the semester—helping fellows to find placement sites in their fields of interest.  “The issues of social inequality are permeable in a wide array of fields, so it takes all of us to…think about how we can resolve those tensions,” Yair said.

The Dwight Hall Urban Fellows program is made possible by the support of the Yale University Office of New Haven Affairs and by the generosity of Dwight Hall alumni and friends.

The Urban Fellowship program exemplifies the Grow pillar of Dwight Hall’s Engage, Grow, and Advance program delivery model. Through the fellowship, students develop the professional capacity and moral character for a lifelong dedication to social justice.