Nonprofit Spotlight
Deland Chan, SPUR
Deland Chan has always been interested in cities and the processes that govern them. An Urban Studies and Sociology major, she was introduced to SPUR, a public policy group that focuses on urban planning, during a summer fellowship at Stanford this year.
About Deland
Deland Chan has always been interested in cities and the processes that govern them. An Urban Studies and Sociology major, she was introduced to SPUR, a public policy group that focuses on urban planning, during a summer fellowship at Stanford this year.
On working at SPUR, Deland said, "I like that SPUR has a pretty 'young' feel to it - everyone is really smart and interesting. [It's] a great place for college students to test out whether or not they would like to work in a public policy, think-tank setting!"
One SPUR focus area for Deland was a project on earthquake preparedness - a topic she had no prior knowledge about. By the end of her 9-week internship, she'd written a 23-page report and given a detailed presentation to SPUR staff.
"I feel a sense of accomplishment because I had tackled a fairly comprehensive topic, wrote a 23-page paper of my findings, and gave a final presentation to SPUR staff. I found that having those concrete benchmarks gave me the impression that I was doing something that had substance for the organization and my own fellowship."
According to Deland, the skills she acquired at SPUR have also helped with her current project: an honors thesis on the housing conditions of migrant workers in Beijing.
SPUR is one of many planning and urban development organizations that use VolunteerMatch to find volunteers want to make a difference in the social fabric of cities. Thanks to VolunteerMatch, these cities, and the people who live there, can grow stronger - one volunteer at a time.
About SPUR
The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) is a member-led non-profit public policy organization, that was founded in 1959. It's organized into seven program areas: Community Planning, Economic Development, Environmental Sustainability, Housing, Transportation, Good Government, and Regional Planning. SPUR's committees and task forces are composed of community members who are working to make San Francisco a better place to live and work.
San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR)
312 Sutter Street Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-781-8726
www.spur.org
Check out SPUR on VolunteerMatch.
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