Reflecting on my Fellowship Experience

By Aiyah Josiah-Faeduwor

This summer as a CNU Fellow, it was one of the most valuable times I’ve spent in my career truly just reflecting on what my own personal theory of change was. What I attribute this most to was the reality that while academia has been instrumental in exposing me to theories, ideas and philosophies that make up my own personal praxis, the structure and function of academia very much works to replicate a banking model where content is deposited into our minds as students and we’re graded on how well we retain this content rather than supported and encouraged to develop our own ideas and theories, with respect to what already exists, and truly given the space and freedom to consider what we would want to contribute within this space. The CNU Fellowship was the first time, and the most effective opportunity I’ve had to do so, and with all considered, particularly the global pandemic ensuing all around us, there couldn't have been a more ideal opportunity to really be thinking about what urban communities need most. 

While this freedom was valuable and helpful, of course there was another side to the coin, the fellowship itself, given the financial support, will inherently attract individuals who have financial need, and likely come from particular marginalized backgrounds. Navigating this aspect of program participation has been something that this late in my career, also was something I wrestled with. In my situation in particular, I spent this summer (and have continued to) trying to rescue, relocate and rebuild my family’s business that was evicted during the pandemic from Boston to Providence. This actively looked like spending 6+ hours a day, every day, fundraising, operating a interim catering business, and meeting and planning the build out of the new location, all while struggling to maintain my role as the breadwinner and support system for my aging parents and my siblings. While at this age I am very use to juggling and the balance, I thought about my fellow fellows, and tried to imagine what they were dealing with and navigating outside of being purely brilliant. What it made me realize is the need for more spaces and programs that work to hold space for this reality, that the best and the brightest, who come for adverse backgrounds, are often holding an immense amount on their shoulders that they generally keep behind the scenes. While it is a difficult task to attempt to acknowledge and hold space for this, while also not creating discomfort, what often occurs  in the struggle to balance these, is that space doesn't get held, and we end up having to, as always, find a way to make it work, despite this. 

Within this very difficult work, in this very complex discipline, we as urbanist navigate the toughest problems our world has to offer. Not because being an urbanist is tangibly harder than open heart surgery, but because being an urbanist requires trying to understand how hard it must be to be to perform open heart surgery, and then has to ask the question of how do we make it easier for communities to access this surgery, or become surgeons, or unpack the systems and root causes that create the need for so many open heart surgeries, or not enough, in urban communities. In short, its hard stuff, but the desire to find the solution is what drives us to this field. 

I am incredibly grateful for this experience, and in eternal appreciation for the opportunity to figure out what problems I want to solve, and how, and am dedicated to doing the same for CNU, in any way needed!