Second-year student Becca Bona has been selected as the 2022 recipient of the Amanda Harris Memorial Scholarship.
The Amanda Harris Memorial Scholarship was established in 2019 by Professor Emeritus Christina Standerfer in the memory of Clinton School graduate Amanda Harris. Now in its fourth year, the scholarship is annually awarded to a student committed to working with a community partner organization on a Capstone project focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Working in partnership with the City of Little Rock, Bona’s Capstone project will focus on improving the efficiency of the city’s numerous boards and commissions. Her work will seek to identify the most effective way to assess, measure, and manage the performance of the city’s boards and commissions to best serve all citizens through an equitable lens.
“The opportunity to work with the City of Little Rock on improving the mission and function of the boards and commissions is related to my goal of making Little Rock a better place not only for me, but also for all other individuals who call this place home,” Bona said. “I don’t believe I will be able to complete this mission without including everyone’s voice in this endeavor – regardless of race, gender identity, and anything else that might set them apart.”
“The selection committee was impressed with her unique, inspirational, and ambitious project proposal,” said Tiffany Jacob, the Clinton School’s Director of International Programs and Outreach. “They felt that her Capstone project best embodied the spirit of the scholarship and what Amanda was all about: helping underutilized and undervalued people in Arkansas.”
Bona’s work with the City of Little Rock will be the third of three major field service projects in her time at the Clinton School.
She recently completed her International Public Service Project in partnership with iDE (International Development Enterprises), an international nonprofit organization that promotes a business approach to increasing income and creating livelihood opportunities for poor rural households. Working with iDE’s monitoring and evaluation team, Bona used best practice research, informal listening sessions, and key informant interviews to gather data and present recommendations to improve an internal-facing digital learning tool.
As a first-year student, Bona was part of Clinton School team that partnered with Habitat for Humanity of Central Arkansas to conduct research and provide recommendations informing a 10-year master plan on the best use for 36 undeveloped acres in southwest Little Rock.
Bona is a graduate of Hendrix College with a degree in literary studies.
About Amanda Harris
Amanda Harris graduated from the Clinton School of Public Service in 2009. Before coming to the Clinton School, Amanda studied at the University of Central Arkansas, earning a degree in communication.
Her passion was human rights and dignity for all people, and she knew the value and power of grassroots organizing, the inclusion of arts into activism, and civil disobedience. This passion was manifested in her work that included being an organizer for and participant in one of the first Soul Force Equality Rides that visited colleges throughout the Southeast to encourage policies affirming the identities of all students and staff.
While completing her International Public Service Project, Amanda worked with a coalition of groups in Brno, Czech Republic, to hold the first Queer Parade in that city. She also served on the board of Center for Artistic Revolution (CAR4AR), an organization that focused on activism through creative endeavors to connect people with the purpose of securing equal rights and fair treatment for all Arkansans. She was known for her engaging personality, her “Arkansassiness,” and her affirmation that her “queer self and Southern self” were big parts of who she was. Amanda died in San Francisco, Calif., on September 23, 2016.
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