My first summer of UniCamp was in 2009. I was a bratty thirteen-year-old that begged my mom to not make me go. She still rubs it in my face that it was one of the best decisions she had ever made for me as a kid. Year after year, I have come back for UniCamp for the impact it continues to have on me and the impact I hope to leave on others.

I applied for LSHIP because I saw that there was room for changes to be made to push this organization from great to outstanding. We started the arts initiative because we saw that a subject once deemed as core, has turned into a privilege that too few can afford. We hope to hand a guitar or a paintbrush to the kid with great amounts of untapped potential and to help the kid who already has one, to grow.

For me, if it wasn’t for UniCamp and the arts education I received, I would not be at UCLA. Combining the two seemed like the right thing to do.

Squirtle is a second-year Art major at UCLA and Head Counselor of Session 7: Expression, Community and Empowerment Through Art (2016).

Compiled by Viridiana “Chancla” Flores UCLA ’16.

Squirtle will be working with the Arts initiative as Head Counselor of Session 7 (2016) in her seventh year with UniCamp.

Squirtle will be working with the Arts initiative as Head Counselor of Session 7 (2016) in her seventh year with UniCamp.