Mongelli Awards

With vision care often overlooked, the Mobile Eye Clinic Undergraduate Connection (UMEC) at UCLA has worked tirelessly to provide free vision care to underprivileged communities in Los Angeles.

With the aim to shift the school-to-prison pipeline to a prison-to-school pipeline, the Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) at UCLA is using higher education as an alternative to incarceration.

The Hunger Project at UCLA is a student-run organization comprised of over sixty volunteers that aims to relieve homelessness in the Greater Los Angeles area.

Through their core values of compassionate care, advocacy, and accessibility, MCP aims to improve the quality of life of folks facing homelessness and other vulnerable populations in the greater Los Angeles area.

Established by UCLA students in 1996, UMMA Volunteer Project (UVP) is a UCLA student organization that provides free health clinic services to underserved populations in South Los Angeles.

UCLA Happy Feet Clinic unites students and medical professionals in hopes of addressing this community’s need by bringing podiatry services to the homeless.

CampMed, a nonprofit organization that started at UCLA in 2013, fills the knowledge gap by educating children about the various career options within the world of healthcare.

Since 2009, LEAP (Leadership and Educational Advancement Program) has promoted leadership and college readiness through mentoring and tutoring to youth at Bethune Middle School and 75th Street Elementary School.

As California is home to one of the largest homeless populations in the nation, Bruin Shelter seeks to support college students who fall within this category. Bruin Shelter is one of the first and only student-run, student-led, free shelters in the nation.

Since 1962, Amigos de UCLA has worked with low-income families to help better the lives of those who may be less fortunate. Amigos approaches their volunteer opportunities with commitment to the community and a strong focus on social justice.

Founded in 2008, Bruins in Focus is the first and only student community service project at UCLA that focuses on the importance of maintaining eye health.

With the donated swipes, the organization is able to maintain its campus-wide and community-based initiatives. It helps secure meal vouchers given to the Bruin Resource Center to distribute to food insecure students, and many of the swipes are also used to help supply the Community Programs Office Food Closet with food items available to students experiencing hunger and/or struggling to attain food due to financial hardships.

Vietnamese Community Health, a Community Service Commission project, works with health care providers in Orange County to provide services to those who would not have access to them otherwise.

Every Sunday, rain or shine, 16 UCLA volunteers, armed with worksheets, supplies for activities, and a pair of keys to two large white vans, travel from Westwood to a government-subsidized housing community in North Hollywood. There, children, young adults, and the UCLA students meet to work on individually-catered academic worksheets, homework, and other various forms of test prep.

Project Literacy is a UCLA community service organization dedicated to improving literacy rates in the Los Angeles region through one-on-one tutoring. Six days a week, at seven unique sites in Watts, Mar Vista, Vernon, and Baldwin Hills, tutors from Project Literacy work one-on-one with children and adults alike to reduce illiteracy rates in the Los Angeles community.

Project BRITE (Bruins Reforming Incarceration Through Education) is dedicated to tutoring and mentoring underserved and at-risk youth within Greater Los Angeles. This includes working with the following populations: incarcerated adolescents, homeless youth, and behaviorally at-risk youth.

Hunger Project works to address homelessness and hunger in the Greater Los Angeles area through services that provide immediate relief to the cycle of poverty.

Interaxon is an undergraduate initiative to make neuroscience a part of curricula across Los Angeles. Focusing primarily on continuation high schools and inner-city K-12 schools, Interaxon goes to sites two to three times a week to get students excited about the brain, science, and college.

Founded in 1998, CityLab at UCLA is a science education program that introduces low income high school students of Los Angeles County to the world of biotechnology through hands on laboratory work. They primarily work with high schools with low Academic Performance Index (API) scores that submit applications to them in hopes of participating in their program.

Special Olympics at UCLA helps lead athletic practices every Saturday and plans social events for the service recipients on select weekends. The service recipients, or athletes, are primarily African American or Hispanic and come from underserved areas, while others are from the Pathway at UCLA Extension program, a post-secondary certificate program that works with students with intellectual disabilities to develop independent living, money management, and other life skills.

Project Working for Immigrant Literacy Development (Project WILD) is a student run community service organization in the USAC Community Service Commission that provides free, weekly English tutoring and mentorship services to students grades 2– 5 in the Garvey and Los Angeles Unified School Districts.

Founded in 2010 by four undergraduate students, Yoga for Flexible Futures aims to teach students with low socioeconomic status about yoga, health and nutrition. Each week, they aspire to get kids excited about transitioning towards healthier and more active lifestyles.

Latinas Guiding Latinas is a non-profit organization started at UCLA that aims to provide K-12 students from the East Los Angeles and El Monte areas with additional resources to develop their prospects for higher education.

Happy Feet Clinic was originally founded in 2008 as a part of the UCLA PRIME Medical School Program’s initiative to create a project or conduct research that addresses health disparities in one of the underserved populations in the Los Angeles community. One of the cohorts of the PRIME program decided to address the podiatric health of the greater Los Angeles community. The undergraduate students took over the graduate student initiative to form Happy Feet Clinic.

Coaching Corps is a national movement that builds and strengthens communities via sports education. They achieve this specifically by approaching low-income elementary schools that cannot afford sports services and offering to develop the students’ sports skills.

Founded eight years ago, the community service project aims to create a sustainable engineering solution to a problem in an underserved international community.

DoT Org (Donation of Tissues & Organs) works tirelessly to clear up the common myths and misconceptions of organ and tissue donation and to register more donors from minority communities. The main goal is still to register as many donors as possible in underrepresented communities but to also educate high school students about higher education requirements and options.

IMHOME has changed the lives of the students and mothers of the Alexandria House in Koreatown. The Alexandria House is “a non-profit transitional residence that provides housing for women and children in the process of moving from emergency shelters to permanent housing.”

M.E.N.T.E (Mentors Empowering and Nurturing Through Education) is a one-on-one mentoring program for students at Alain LeRoy Locke High School, a Green Dot public charter high school in South Los Angeles. M.E.N.T.E. aims to increase the number of high school students applying to and enrolling in universities, colleges, and vocational schools.

Founded circa 1988 by the Muslim Student Union, IYTP works to provide resources and mentorship to incarcerated youth who don’t have sufficient academic and social development. The project further aims to change and challenge social institutions that dictate and enforce the School-to-Prison pipeline, a social pattern where disadvantaged and minority students are (both actively and passively) pushed out of school and into the criminal justice system through lack of proper educational and social assistance.

The Central Valley Project (CVP) at UCLA is a student-run organization that assists high school students from California's Central Valley in the pursuit of higher education. We achieve this through our bi-weekly site visitations that center on navigating the college application process, participating in community service, and touring prestigious universities.

Building Engineers and Mentors is a group of students who are not only interested in science, technology, engineering and math, but also have a passion for bringing science and engineering to Los Angeles schools. Founded at UC Berkeley in 2008, BEAM’s core values are passion, diversity, and leadership: “We believe that community service builds strong, empathetic leaders.”

Project 1 is a UCLA student volunteer organization that has committed to mentoring and tutoring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and ally youth in the Los Angeles community since 2008. Their mission is to empower high school students and strengthen their individual identities while educating them about issues unique to the LGBT community.

Since 1970, Project B.R.I.T.E. (Bruins Reforming Incarceration Through Education) has been dedicated to tutoring and mentoring young men between the ages of 14 and 18 living in juvenile detention camps. Their main goal is to reduce the rate of re-offenses of these young men by providing them with mental support and means for a better life.

The IDEAS project is dedicated to Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, and Success. They advocate for immigrant rights and make a strong effort to prevent the dreams for AB-540 students from fading away by communicating that despite being undocumented, there are many ways to overcome their obstacles.

The Asian Pacific Health Corps is a UCLA student volunteer organization whose mission is to promote healthy lifestyles among disadvantaged Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities. Devoted to this mission since 1980, APHC continues to serve API communities that have minimal access to healthcare and limited financial resources.

PREP utilizes an arts-based approach to provide its students opportunities to express themselves creatively, from haiku poetry to dot art, origami, shading and basic shapes, photography, collages, and self-portraits. Through creative expression, PREP ties in its core goals: Community Consciousness, Cultural Awareness, Leadership Skills, and Higher Education.

BruinHope is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2004 on the UCLA campus. Their goal since has been to serve orphanages in Tijuana Mexico that are in need of resources. UCLA BruinHope makes four quarterly visits to deliver collections of material and food.

School on Wheels at UCLA works to enhance educational opportunities for children who are experiencing homelessness from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Their goal is to shrink the gaps in child's learning and provide them with the highest level of education possible.

Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA works towards helping the homeless population in West Hollywood by providing for a number of needs: medical care, health promotion, disease prevention activities, legal advocacy and referrals to health and social services.

Interaxon is a student organization that provides short interactive seminars about neuroscience to local underprivileged schools, particularly in the Compton area. The schools that Interaxon targets are those that have a high percentage of low-income families and that are scoring below the state average in science and mathematics.

Started in early 2008 with three founders, along with the Vice Chancellor and the Student Affairs department, Bruin Guardian Scholars was created to provide service and resources to high school students in current and former foster care.

Founded just two years ago by Physics and Astronomy graduate students Kristin Kulas and Gregory Mace, Astronomy Live! aims to educate the public about astronomy. The group strives to foster an interest in science in general, especially early on, in hopes that it may develop into a future career.

Bruin Music Tutors provide the Daniel Webster students an opportunity for personalized musical attention that they would not otherwise have- in the 10 years that the music teacher has been teaching, only 10 students have attended private music classes. Personal tutoring allows students to try solos and improve their musical skills, correcting any mistakes that may not be noticed in the general music class of over 40 students.

Founded in 1989, Pilipinos for Community Health has grown into a large, active student-run organization with 40 active volunteers and a board of 15 dedicated directors. Through their three components, Community Outreach, Preventive Health, and Pre-health Advising and Mentorship, PCH strives to raise awareness about health issues and promote healthy lifestyles in the Pilipino community.

The Colleges Against Cancer collaboration aims to promote the programs and missions of the American Cancer Society through four main pillars: advocacy, cancer education, survivorship, and Relay for Life.

An event initiated by the group Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success (IDEAS) at UCLA to promote the educational, political, social, and financial empowerment of undocumented students. IYEC was designed as a forum to follow up on workshops facilitated by the AB540 Project, the recurring service component of IDEAS whose mission is to increase awareness of the AB-540 law.

In envisioning, organizing and hosting the Southeast Asian (SEA) Admit Weekend, these students demonstrate the power volunteerism has to bring about real change. The Vietnamese Student Union, United Khmer Students, Thai Smakom, Laotian American Organization, Burmese Student Association and the Association of Hmong Students will together be hosting the second annual weekend on April 15-17.