Second-year student Savanna George (Searcy, Ark.) has been selected as the inaugural Amanda Harris Memorial Scholarship recipient.
The scholarship was established in the memory of Clinton School graduate Amanda Harris, who passed away in September 2016. It is awarded to a student committed to working with a community partner organization on a Capstone project focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
For her Capstone project, George is working with Harmony Health Clinic to encourage coalition building amongst healthcare services who provide services for uninsured and low-income residents of Little Rock, particularly in the LBGTQIA+ community. She is organizing meetings with local charitable health clinics and other community partners in an effort to form a formal coalition in order to increase clinic specialization and cooperation.
Last summer, George traveled to Tirana, Albania, to conduct research on the use of a community safe space by the Association of Albanian Girls and Women. During the 2018-19 academic year, George and other first-year students developed marketing pieces to tell the story of the Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Pulaski County.
A graduate of Harding University with a degree in social work, George has worked as a client advocate for White County Domestic Violence Prevention, Inc., and a case manager with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.
Harris, who graduated in 2009, was one of the first openly gay students to enroll at the Clinton School of Public Service. Her field service work included work on community development, women’s empowerment, and rural heritage development in the Arkansas Delta region; an independent study of LGBTQ rights and advocacy in the Czech Republic; and various work with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force/Policy Institute.
A native of Lonoke, Ark., Harris earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Central Arkansas. Before enrolling at the Clinton School, she participated in the 2007 Soulforce Equality Ride, a two-month long bus journey to promote equal rights in public schools throughout America.
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