Mathew headshot

Emerson Fellow

Roshin Mathew

12th Class, 2005-2006

Roshin received her political science degree from Oregon’s Reed College in 2004 and taught English at a middle school in Japan for a year afterward.  She traveled extensively in Japan and South East Asia where she volunteered with homeless squatters in Osaka and recorded the stories of Khmer Rouge survivors in Ankor Wat.  Roshin spent a summer in Cape Town, South Africa where she wrote a case study on the city’s juvenile crime system.  She also taught after school classes on film at a Portland middle school and worked at Sister’s of the Road Café, a restaurant which caters to Portland’s homeless population.

Field placement: Ladder Up / Center for Economic Progress

Chicago, Illinois

Roshin was the Capacity Building and Training Liaison for the Center for Economic Progress.  She worked with local child care providers to develop and implement an evaluation guide to determine and improve the impact of the Center's Family Child Care Tax Project, the provider's usage of the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program, compliance issues, and other factors that could improve the economic prosperity of the providers and the quality of care for the children that they serve.

Policy placement: Connect For Kids

Washington, D.C.

At Connect for Kids, Roshin functioned as both a journalist and advocate.  In the capacity of a journalist, she wrote four feature length articles about children and the various hunger, nutrition, and poverty issues that they face.  Her advocacy work included organizing potential partners who work on juvenile justice delinquency prevention and analyzing data on the effects of current legislative programs on the juvenile justice system.

Hunger Free Community Report

The Special Financial Educational Report aired on WLUW 88.7 F.M.’s Community News report.  The radio feature included interviews with experts in the field of volunteer income tax preparation and the earned income tax credit.  The report provided listeners with information on how they could increase the amount of the refund which working families received.