Project Partner: Roca, Summer 2026
Project Summary: In cities, high-risk young people impacted by incarceration navigate toxic environments such as unstable housing, neighborhood violence, policing, and limited access to basic resources. These environmental health burdens compound the challenges of reentry, concentrating harm and instability in overburdened urban communities.
At Roca in Chelsea, MA, Zanyah engaged in the Transitional Employment Program, Development Days, policy lobbying, Rewire CBT programming, and was the co-keeper of a Roundtable Circle with youth from Roca, UTEC, and LYSOA. Through these experiences, she built meaningful relationships with young people and developed a conceptual framework for understanding incarceration as an environmental burden that shapes how youth experience urban spaces.
Zanyah’s work connects lived experience to public storytelling and policy advocacy by translating human narratives into communications and legislative materials that support community-based alternatives over punishment. This internship advances an environmental justice-focused understanding of reentry, showing that healthier urban communities require investments in healing, stability, and youth opportunity rather than incarceration alone.
Project Deliverables:
- “Roca Costs Less Than Corrections” one-pager
- FY26 Q4 Roca Boston Quarterly Newsletter
- Raise the Age bill lobbying
- Written testimony for H.5085/S.3095
- Roundtable Circle co-keeper
- Incarceration and Environmental Justice conceptual framework.
Watch Zanyah’s URBAN internship lightning talk here.