During J-Term this year, a group of students each completed individual Live It Fund projects supported by Macalester’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. On Thursday, February 5, six students shared their Live It Fund work with the Macalester and wider Twin Cities community.
Caroline Fitzpatrick: “Voices of Lake Street”
Caroline Fitzpatrick ’26 collaborated with Lake Street Council and local community members on their “Voices of Lake Street” project, focused on the “thriving [Lake Street] community full of colorful murals, diverse immigrant diasporas and the best restaurants in the Twin Cities,” Fitzpatrick explained.
During J-Term, Fitzpatrick interviewed Lake Street businesses and recorded their life experiences on an ArcGIS StoryMap she designed specifically for this purpose. They talked with five immigrant business owners in the corridor: Ramon of Monkey Tattoo; Mariam of Hoyo Sambusa; Trung of Pham’s Rice Bowls, who has been a part of Midtown Global Market since its opening; Olivia of ZO Audio and Anisa of Channa Kitchen. Anisa’s restaurant catered the Live It Fund presentations.
Fitzpatrick’s StoryMap highlights the sense of home and supportive community the business owners both feel and help foster. Many business owners mentioned feeling grateful and proud of the diversity of the corridor and their ability to support the community by being role models for small business ownership.
The StoryMap also highlights the resilience of Lake Street business owners throughout many hardships, particularly COVID-19 and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.
“The community came out and supported us [through hard times], and we lasted for 20 years,” Trung said. “That’s how we coexist with each other, and that’s how we [connect] with [the] community and survive.”
Federal immigration enforcement has hit Lake Street hard. Many small, immigrant-owned businesses that make up the corridor have had to close as their customers and employees protect themselves.
“This moment is harder than COVID, harder than George Floyd, harder than the killings in Brooklyn Park,” Olivia of ZO Audio said. “This is the hardest time of all. I have university students who work for me, but I haven’t been able to open for three months, so I can’t pay them, and I know they’re struggling.”
When businesses are forced to close in fear of raids, the families are also hit badly from the loss of income, pushing some to stay open despite high risks. “Ramon, from Monkey Tattoo, really inspired me with his bravery,” Fitzpatrick said. “He told me how he’s still showing up to work every day because he has to support his family of six.”
A week after his interview, Ramon was detained. At the closing of the presentation, Fitzpatrick asked Mac students to patronize the businesses on Lake Street and passed out a QR code with a link to the StoryMap and a GoFundMe for Ramon and his family.
Joseph Saptura: “Peta Hidup Solo”
Joseph Saptura ’27 presented his project “Peta Hidup Solo,” a multimedia map of the informal street vendors in Solo, Indonesia. Saptura, who is from Solo, noticed that street vendors from his town often go unnoticed.
“99 percent of the vendors [in Solo] are invisible in data,” Saptura said. “They don’t have any visibility towards anybody or towards any exposure. If they disappear tomorrow, nobody cares. Nobody notices [their] struggle.”
As a part of this project, Saptura worked remotely to design a website that mapped out these vendors as well as elderly workers throughout the city. Saptura, along with 15 volunteers on the ground in Indonesia, helped to put together a project that would tell the story of these vendors, providing awareness to these sellers and the vendor community.
“We go on the ground [in Solo] and spread out,” Saptura said. “We collect stories, we listen to them and we do … interviews … and we put them on the publicly accessible map.”
The website attempts to shine light onto the street vendors by allowing users to go to the map and click on interviews and stories from people in the city, and provide opportunities to direct donations back to the vendors. Saptura showcased the effects of the website by presenting the story of Mr. Solikin’s, who has been an informal vendor for almost a decade and created a career out of this market.
“[The project] was about listening, observing, and resisting the urge to oversimplify complex lives … it stayed grounded in respect and it didn’t treat people as data points or charity cases,” Saptura wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly.
Peta Hidup Solo documents their work to be compatible with both Saptura’s website as well as on their social media accounts, to allow for more individuals to learn about these people’s stories. Their next steps are to partner with Non-Governmental Organizations and local schools in Indonesia to spread awareness about their project and the informal vendor market in Solo.
Alice Gray: “Humedales en Tinta/Wetlands in Ink”
While abroad in Valdivia, Chile, Alice Gray ’26 took a guided walk with a biologist, which ended up influencing her Live It Fund project. The biologist recounted a day of field work in which she encountered piles of trash and discarded furniture in one of Valdivia’s wetlands. She explained that the trash was there because of a lack of access to environmental education.
Gray’s project, “Humedales en Pinta/Wetlands in Ink,” combines the work she completed with wetlands she did while abroad and in her geography capstone with knowledge gained from a printmaking class she took. Over J-Term, she returned to Valdivia to host printmaking workshops for the community. Gray developed a curriculum for these sessions, in which she hoped to “encourage artists to reflect on their relationships to local wetlands, process the impacts of climate change and inspire action,” she explained.
The workshops included guided conversations about participants’ relationships with wetlands and the role of art in environmental justice. Participants also stamped their clothes and collaborated on two prints: one to leave at the Cruces River Wetland Center in Valdivia, and one for Gray to take back and share in her presentation.
“[This] was a really interesting exercise to think about: ‘what stories do you want to share with your own community? What feelings, emotions do you want to portray?’” Gray said. “And then, ‘What also do you want to share with a different community? How do you want to promote and advocate for these challenges across the world?”
Gray ended her presentation by encouraging attendees to connect with print workshops like those that have taken place in the Twin Cities in recent weeks and to explore Minnesota’s wetlands.
Lenti Govoreanu: “Sounds of English”
Lenti Govoreanu ’29, who is originally from Romania, was inspired by his transition into college life and the creativity it fostered to give back to his home. His project, titled “Sounds of English” was a five-day program designed to help teach English to students at his former high school through popular songs.
15 students participated in five after-school workshop sessions, where they were able to learn new English grammar and vocabulary. Alongside this, the students were able to try American staples, such as snacks. By sharing culture, Govoreanu aimed to provide new perspectives.
“This project was not only about teaching English through music, [it] was about showing a different perspective of learning and actually engaging with this educational process,” Govoreanu said. “In the public educational system in Romania, there is a very traditional, strict, hierarchical educational system where the teacher is somewhere very above the students, so that’s really impacting the confidence of the students in themselves and the way they approach learning.”
It was a give and take relationship, too. Govoreanu opened the floor for the attendees to teach him things; in his presentation, he referenced a moment where participants explained the “6- 7” meme. He wanted to put the confidence back into the students and reframe how they view learning a second language: emphasizing the ability to make mistakes in effort to express themselves accurately, rather than in a grammatically correct way. While Govoreanu had received feedback that the program was too short, his goal of planting seeds of confidence succeeded, and he said he hopes they grow on their own.
“Something that I really want to leave you all with is to think of the communities that you’re coming from — your hometowns, your Macalester community — and try to create that change,” Govoreanu said. “Let’s not wait for the time when we are ready, because we are never going to be ready.”
Blanche Reading: “Reentry Connect MN”
Blanche Reading ’26 focused on reducing recidivism rates in Minnesota through her project “Reentry Connect MN.” Since her sophomore year, Reading has been working to address the phenomenon of recidivism. Doing so would be one step in addressing the “brokenness of the U.S. carceral system, which, of course, is a massive issue,” Reading said. She went on to note that 38% of people released from Minnesota prisons are reconvicted within three years. This issue led her to work with Twin Cities R!SE, a local organization which provides workforce development, including for many who were recently released from prison.
Blanche continued working with Twin Cities R!SE and another group called School Foundry for her J-Term project, during which she built a website that compiles resources for people upon being released from prison. The site is organized into six sections: Housing and Shelter, Legal Aid, Employment Resources, Healthcare & Mental Health, Education & Training and Food Assistance.
“There are many organizations in the Twin Cities and Minnesota that help with these very things,” Reading said. “But the issue is that they’re very fragmented. An organization like Twin Cities R!SE … doesn’t provide services like mental health support and healthcare. This [is] where Reentry Connect comes in, and it’s designed as a single entry point to help people find and navigate reentry resources and across Minnesota.”
She hopes that these resources will help people navigate “practical reintegration,” the establishment of job and housing security; outstanding legal concerns, such as parole, court fees and more. The website also has resources which assist in redeveloping social connections; “navigating the challenges and the stigma that are associated with being imprisoned.”
The website is intended to be very practical, and Twin Cities R!SE has started to incorporate it into their employment training. Reading plans to continue her work on the site including updating for feedback, contacting new organizations and helping people who are being released from immigration detention facilities.
David Rios Torres: “Camino a la U”
Hermogenes “David” Rios Torres ’27 worked on his project, “Camino a la U” (“Path to University”) in Bolivia over the break, where he focused on the power of education. Rios Torres has previous education experience; he taught Spanish in a public school in Seattle and Zumba to a group of elderly people.
In his project, he created a roadmap centering around Bolivia’s education system. Being from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Rios Torres could point to a gap between what’s being taught in Bolivian high school and what’s being taught at university. In his view, high school education does not adequately prepare Bolivian students for the entrance exam into universities. His solution was to provide math preparation to low-income students preparing for the university exam.
“If you did not pass the exam, you had a chance next year, but chances are that you will end up working somewhere else,” Rios Torres said. Rios Torres originally had received so much interest in his program that he had to eventually narrow the requirements to low-income students, as he could only handle 25 mentees at a time. In his selected pool, he brought with him his knowledge of being a preceptor for the statistics, mathematics and economics departments and his experience with education to run a two-week program focusing on different topics each day. He focused on specific strategies for preparation to tackle difficult questions on the exam that would likely come up.
The Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation is currently receiving applications for the summer 2026 Live It Fund program.
* Ella Stern ’27 and Yoni Conn ’28 contributed to the writing for this story.
