Delesiya Davis - MCAN and I

Hello! My name is Delesiya Davis. I was born and raised in Lansing, MI. I graduated from a wonderful school  called the University of Michigan with my BA in Women’s Studies and History and a minor in Judaic Studies. While this is my first year with MNA, I am a second-year VISTA. My previous VISTA year I served in Miami, FL working with an organization named Girl Power. As my year ended, I realized that I wanted to switch gears a bit and focus more so on the education sector. Now a year post graduation, I had come to realize just how much getting an education impacted my life and the amount of opportunities that had suddenly become available because I had a BA. I had always wanted to give back to my own community, so I began to look for opportunities back in Lansing. Luckily, I stumbled across MNA, which introduced me to my current site, the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN).

I knew that MCAN was a good fit for me when I read their, now our, mission statement. MCAN’s mission is to “Increase college readiness, participation, and completion in Michigan, particularly among low-income students, first-generation college-going students, and students of color.” Given that I fit all three of those categories, and that that those are also the communities that I want to create change in, MCAN was the obvious choice for me. Thankfully, they felt the same way about me.

During my time with MCAN, I have worked on a number of projects that I feel have had an impact on moving the needle on college access. The project that I am proudest of is hosting several webinars that were a part of our “Admissions Updates” webinar series. In my previous VISTA year, a lot of the work that I did was on the back end of things. For this webinar series, while I did much of the prep work which was on back end things, I also got to be front and center during the webinars. This was very rewarding and I felt that my talents were being utilized, while also pushing me outside of my comfort zone. Ironically, I am not the biggest fan of public speaking, however, I plan to be a lawyer and eventually run for office, makes perfect sense.

While I did enjoy my first VISTA year experience, I wish I had known about this AmeriCorps position at MCAN when looking for post-graduation options. MCAN is an amazing organization that really cares about their mission. In my short time being here I have witnessed nothing short of everyone being all hands on deck and rolling with the punches as they come. This is an organization that I am proud to be a part of and proud to represent!