Benellen Camacho Email & Phone Number

As an Intercultural Outreach and Retention Leader, I mentor college students and high school students wanting to attend college. We make an effort to establish positive relationships with these students to build community by recognizing truth, history, resiliency, intersectionality, voice, and equity within the spectrum of people we work with. We develop events and workshops as well as collaborate with community members and campus faculty to promote better ways of educating and supporting students within the realms that the students themselves see necessary. This work allows students to recognize the strengths and resiliency through their adversity to move forward with their challenges by being that positive support system and peer mentor. Numerous students face challenges that could be better coped with when there is positive and comfortable support to turn to, and I wish to continue implementing strengths-based approaches with youths to help them achieve their own goals and encourage new ones. In addition, as a Behavioral Intervention and Support Specialist (BISS), I work closely with foster youths to make progress towards behavioral and permanency goals. Therapeutic interactions and community outings are used as intervention techniques, which signifies building positive relationships and feeling supported. My position as a BISS and an Intercultural Outreach and Retention Leader have overlapping efforts and values in which we make an effort to establish rapport and emphasize working towards a common goal that was made in collaboration. Community outreach is also a critical aspect to being a BISS. This provides beneficial experiences towards collaborating with a wider population to ensure successful progress and interventions for all those involved. Working with multiple youths with varying goals emphasizes how individual needs must be recognized to implement beneficial intervention and prevention plans. Generalizing criteria for a larger population can be maladaptive when each person's needs and identities differ, and these differences must be considered. Strengths-based approaches and cultural humility recognizes this challenge, and these are two practices I wish to continue as a student and later as a professional.

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  Washington State University Vancouver

  Psychology And Human Development