2017/2018 NLC Menino Fellow

The Initiative on Cities (IOC) is pleased to announce Augustine Jimenez (Boston University Class of 2020) as our 2017 – 2018 National League of Cities (NLC) Menino Fellow. Jimenez is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations. Through this Fellowship, Jimenez will spend the fall semester paired with a faculty member in an on-campus Directed Study program. He will spend the 2018 spring semester in Boston University’s (BU) Washington DC study abroad program, where he will take classes and participate in a paid internship in the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education and Families.

Through his Directed Study and his internship with the NLC, Jimenez plans to research affordable housing policies aimed at homeless youth, particularly immigrant youth from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Jimenez will investigate the resources and programming provided by Boston Public Schools for immigrant communities and research comparable programming in other cities to find optimal solutions to immigrant youth homelessness and educational achievement.

Jimenez is already an experienced advocate for immigrant youth. As a high school student, he founded Leadership Chapter of HoPe (Hispanic Organization Promoting Education), Inc., the largest Hispanic organization in the southeastern United States, to bridge the communication gap between his high school’s administration and the community of Latino parents, many of whom did not speak English. The following year, Jimenez’s work bore fruit in the form of the highest number of Latino graduates in its history.

Jimenez is a veteran intern with the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office, where he has worked for both the Mayor’s event team and within his community organizing initiatives. Jimenez is also a Posse Scholarship recipient, a competitive national scholarship for urban high school students with strong leadership abilities who seek to be part of a cohort–a “posse”–during college to support each other’s academic and professional ambitions.

The National League of Cities Menino Fellowship is a joint effort by the Initiative on Cities and the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education and Families. It is named in honor of IOC Co-Founder and former Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino. Mayor Menino was dedicated to serving the youngest members of urban populations and in 2000, he helped found the Institute for Youth, Education and Families. The NLC Menino Fellowship upholds that commitment.