Founders Anyssa Reddix, a Daily Tar Heel reporter, and Seteena Turner said they began planning Spark in the spring after noticing a lack of resources for women of color on campus.
“There’s a lot of resources for minority students and a lot of resources for men of color, but what Seteena and I noticed is there’s no specific space for women of color and a lot of the issues are kind of unique,” Reddix said.
Reddix said she wants to see programs for women of color that focus on mental health, confidence and combatting imposter syndrome.
Angie Matos, the Hinton James community director, said she is assisting with the advising for UNC Spark planning.
“I believe that a pocket of our student population that identify as women of underrepresented racial and ethnic identities are going to find another system of support that may have taken a bit longer to create,” Matos said.
Of 56 first-years who applied to the program, only 24 will go on the retreat at Camp Oak Hill in Oxford.
Erica Wallace, the coordinator for peer mentoring and engagement at the Center for Student Success and Academic Counseling, said because it is the program’s first year, they wanted to start small. Along with Turner and Reddix, six other students will accompany the first-years as counselors on the retreat.
“It’ll be a weekend for the young ladies to come together, to build community,” Wallace said. “At this point, they will have been at UNC for about a month so they’ll have a chance to kind of share some of their experiences as women of color on Carolina’s campus, talk about some of their fears and just to really have a chance to build community with first-years and also upperclassmen who have been where they’re trying to go.”
