Unsung Heroes of UMD, a new organization at the University of Maryland that draws inspiration from “Humans of New York,” officially launched Sunday after forming at the end of last semester.
The group, which is made up of about 25 undergraduate students, shares university workers’ stories HONY style, with social media posts that share a story and an accompanying photo. There are two Unsung Heroes featured already via the chapter’s Facebook — the first one profiles Selamawit Abebe, Footnotes Cafe’s food service supervisor, who describes advice her mother gave her about always being positive when dealing with difficult customers.
The project “aims to bridge the rift between students and staff workers at UMD … and capture their portraits of humanity through story telling,” according to the group’s Facebook page.
“I think students at Maryland have always been aware of the workers; it’s not like this is the first time they have started to appreciate them,” said Teju Peesay, a senior cell biology and genetics major and co-president of the chapter. “[But] it would just unite the campus that much more, because UMD is such a large, expansive [campus] … [and] bring an easier way for students to get to know the workers, to basically facilitate that engagement.”
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The overarching organization, Unsung Heroes Inc., started at Georgetown University as a class project in February 2015, and the chapter began sharing stories on April 1, 2016. It is now expanding to universities across the country.
Ten universities have already launched or are ready to launch and share stories within the next week or two, including UCLA, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Syracuse University, wrote Febin Bellamy, the national founder and president of the Georgetown University chapter, in an email. Unsung Heroes Inc. is also working with the University of Pittsburgh, University of Georgia and New York University, among others, to launch as well, possibly as soon as next semester. It’s received interest from more than 40 universities since April 2016, he added.
“Our goal is just to really spread our movement,” said Bellamy, a senior business management major at Georgetown. “Storytelling is the main aspect of it, but we really pride ourselves on our network and our ability to build. Once we get out there in like 20 [or] 30 schools, I think we’re going to be able to really start a movement.”
The movement at this university first started when freshman economics and finance major Jacob Tasto reached out to Unsung Heroes Inc. over Facebook on Oct. 14 after reading a Washington Post article about the group. Peesay reached out on Facebook to the group as well on Nov. 10. Bellamy connected the two, and they are now the co-presidents of this university’s chapter.
“By posting these stories emphasizing their humanity, we sort of break down those barriers [between the students and the workers],” Tasto said. “Our hope is that students appreciate workers more, they recognize what they’re doing, because they really do have a huge impact on just the day-to-day life. They make things a lot easier.”
The group plans to post twice a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays, Peesay wrote in a message.
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After the group formed its nine-member executive board at the end of fall semester, Peesay met with Jewel Washington, university human resources assistant vice president, in early January to set up a meeting with different departments on the campus, including the employee relations manager for Residential Facilities’ division of student affairs, Dining Services’ associate director and Facilities Management’s human resources director, Peesay said.
“Now that [Unsung Heroes Inc.] want[s] to expand to other chapters, [they] want to make sure … all of those directors are aware of us, just to make sure that we aren’t affiliated with unions, just so that they know what our mission is,” Peesay said. “There was really no hesitation from [the department directors], they were totally supporting it — they started to nominate workers to us and from there we’re going to keep going … and hopefully move forward with getting student nominations.”
The group is currently looking for more interviewers, photographers and fundraising volunteers as well, Tasto wrote in a message.
Dining Services Senior Associate Director Joe Mullineaux, who attended the February meeting, said his department is eager to get involved with the project.
“The group explained to us what their intentions were and they gave us examples of other campuses who had started similar programs, and we all thought it was a spectacular idea,” Mullineaux said. “We’ve already submitted five potential names for them … and we’re asking people to come forward if they’re interested in being interviewed by the group.”
Now that Unsung Heroes of UMD has officially launched, Tasto said he is hoping to transform workers’ lives.
“A lot of them do have entrepreneurial interests, and I’m hoping we can incorporate more support for their endeavors in the future,” Tasto said. “I actually mentioned to Febin about hosting an event where workers could actually pitch their ideas to a panel of professionals and then actually receive some sort of money to sort of build and grow.
“We’ve talked to two workers and both of them already have family businesses — this could then be a way to give them some capital to grow and get some publicity,” he added. “So they can grow bigger and hopefully, sort of, bring the American Dream back.”
