After revolutionizing Penn's involvement with the local community, College senior Mei Elansary is receiving national recognition and soon will be combatting health issues on an international scale.
Elansary was named to the second team in USAToday's 2004 All-USACollege Academic Team. She was recognized for her work in the West Philadelphia community through Sayre Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Program.
A double major in biological basis of behavior and environmental studies and a member of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, Elansary was nominated for the USAToday award by University President Judith Rodin. She was one of 60 winners chosen from an applicant pool of 600.
Twenty first-team winners of the award received $2,500 each, and their pictures will be featured in USA Today.
Though she will receive no financial compensation, Elansary's award was well deserved, according to those who have worked with her.
"Mei is great, she is a very dynamic person," said Dana Prince, a Sayre program coordinator for the Center for Community Partnerships a campus organization that fosters ties between the University community and that of West Philadelphia who is also one of the full-time collaborators. "She can find creative ways to address problems. ... She understands how partnerships should work."
Also one of five students in the country to receive the national Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award, Elansary founded the Sayre project in the fall of 2002. Her project aims to bridge the divide between Penn and its neighborhood community regarding issues of health and educational disparities.
The strategy of local collaboration Elansary developed includes teaching the basics of health and nutrition in the classroom, the employment of full-time coordinators and the development of new academically based community service courses at Penn where students can put their knowledge into practice in an actual learning environment.
"She played a huge role in getting many Penn students and faculty to address the community's health promotion," CCP Associate Director Cory Bowman said.
Sayre involves four full-time staff members, 650 West Philadelphia students, 70 Penn students and 20 public school teachers across 12 institutions.
It offers a wide series of after-school and evening programs, ranging from fine arts to medical education to nutrition awareness.
"The goal is to empower students at the schools and at Penn to be the instruments of their own education," Elansary said.
Elansary's interest in health and fitness education started in her freshman year, when she joined the CCP as a volunteer.
As a first step, she opened an after-school produce store for the children of Charles R. Drew Elementary School, located at 38th and Warren streets, so that children would not have to resort to eating unhealthy snacks.
"Students were eager to advocate for their health and that of their community," Elansary said about her experience.
She was then inspired to take her interest to a wider context and address other issues that were being neglected in the children's education.
In the summer months of 2002, she was an intern for the Penn Program for Public Service. Uniting her research in the workplace with her academic studies, Elansary wrote and was awarded a substantial grant proposal to the City of Philadelphia's Beacon Initiative after-school program.
Bowman said that, because of the success of her innovative strategy, Elansary "has been going around by invitation to a number of universities in Pennsylvania, who have gotten very excited about this."
After graduation, Elansary plans to return to her native country of Egypt where she will collaborate with the University of Cairo on a similar project, Ishraq, which will involve 120 villagers.
