Alumni
Marijke Kylstra
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Marijke is passionate about using service to address issues of inequality and to empower individuals and communities. She is particularly interested in working with issues concerning the needs of diverse populations, the environment, social justice, and sustainable development.
Marijke has long focused on serving diverse populations. After moving to Charleston, SC as a junior, she founded the Gay Straight Alliance to provide a safe space for students in the LGBTQ community at her high school. She also began volunteering with the Hispanic community at this time. After becoming fluent in Spanish, she started working extensively with the Hispanic community in Charleston and Nashville. She worked as a volunteer translator at the Medical University of South Carolina the summer after her freshman year and has continued volunteering with Workers’ Dignity, a local organization that focuses on fighting for workers’ rights in Nashville and works predominantly with the Hispanic community. She also participated in an Alternative Spring Break trip to Brownsville, TX her sophomore spring to volunteer with children detained while immigrating illegally.
One of Marijke’s most important service activities was working as a community organizer for Organizing for Action (OFA) in the spring of 2014. She was chosen to be the head field organizer for creating teams and organizing within downtown Nashville, the most populous area in which OFA operates in Davidson County, with over 14,000 volunteers. She organized teams of volunteers that worked to raise awareness about the issues of health care reform, immigration reform, women’s rights, gun violence prevention, and climate change. She hopes to continue working as a community organizer in the future.
At Vanderbilt, Marijke is also involved with SPEAR, the Vanderbilt sustainability and environmental awareness club. She began working with The Nashville Food Project her junior year at Vanderbilt and worked with them on her summer project in 2015, which focused on improving environmental education efforts at the organization and improving the organization’s beekeeping capacities.
Entering into her senior year, Marijke hopes to continue working with The Nashville Food Project and Workers’ Dignity, and to increase her involvement in environmental and social justice activism. In the future, she hopes to live and work internationally in South or Central America and/or Southeast Asia and would like to focus on sustainable economic development and social justice issues. She is particularly interested in issues of food security and inequality in access to resources, and hopes to work in the United States through public policy or local community development to address these issues. She is extremely grateful for having been chosen as an Ingram Scholar.