Trans-Border Institute issues grants and allows USD students to give back

Lauren Barulich / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

While most students visit Mexico to surf, party or explore the culture, other venture across the border for different reasons. For junior Ryan Brennan and other USD students, Mexico presents an opportunity to help people.

Brennan and his peers ventured to Colonia La Morita in Tijuana this past Saturday to teach and perform dental care in the community. Giving grants to students like Brennan to accomplish over the border programs is just one way that the Trans-Border Institute (TBI) exposes students to this unfamiliar side of Mexico located just 30 miles from our campus.

“The goal of the project is to send four to five USD students interested in dentistry together with a dentist from the San Diego area to Casa San Eugenio every other Saturday. While there, students will help the community by performing cleaning and sealants on patients and teaching and promoting oral healthcare to the area,” Brennan said.

The TBI, founded in fall of 1994, has continued to offer research grants, campus conferences, internship and employment opportunities for USD students and faculty. Along with Brennan’s project, the TBI has awarded over $200,000 in grants in the past five years alone. Other examples of grant receipants are Evelyn Diaz Cruz, a faculty member who produced a play last year on border related issues, and Angela Yeung who put together a joint symphonic performance with the USD symphony and the Sinófinica Juvenil de Tijuana.

Brennan wants to display the group’s progress as well as the different border issues they come across with a photography exhibit.

“This project relates to the U.S.-Mexico border due to the difference we will encounter in healthcare service and availability of dental and medical care,” Brennan said. “I hope that our club will be able to reach out to a community in need.”

The grants are among the many impressive accomplishments that Dr. Shirk, the residing director of the TBI for the past six years, can note of the border experience that the institution provides.

“We help bring attention to Mexico on border issues on our campus and also bring our campus to Mexico and their border activities,” Shirk said.

With generous funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Packard Foundation, the TBI is currently undertaking two major projects, the TBI Development Project and the TBI Justice Reform Project. The TBI Development Project involves work with micro-credit lending, which is dispersing small loans to people in need of assistance. An example would be giving someone $300 who can then use it to open a small business.

“This program is mutually beneficial, providing students an opportunity to learn about micro-credit and Los Niños an external perspective to how they are doing, which they can use to improve their programs,” Shirk said.
Also, there is the TBI Justice in Mexico Project, which consists of different conferences with other academics and policy makers in Mexico, monthly news reports discussing current events in Mexico, and most recently, a forum that Shirk attended with the Mexican Ambassador this past Friday in Washington.

The issues at the heart of this project are security relations in Mexico and the narcotic trafficking that the country faces. USD students and employees are helping the TBI by tracing the violence through different news programs, tracking it in a series of maps and then publishing this information.

For those who are interested in these issues, a way to get hands-on experience is through a program the TBI started just last summer. The program is the Seminario de Estudios Fronterizos, and it recently provided two USD students the opportunity to spend three weeks in Baja California.

During those three weeks, the students attended classes at Universidad Ibeoramericana with other Spanish-speaking students. Along with classes, the students also completed community service projects, traveled around Mexico and immersed themselves in the culture.

The Summer Seminar Program was so successful that the TBI hopes to continue sending students in the future. For more information or to apply to the program, visit their website: tij.uia.mx.