Outstanding Community Service – Dana Kivel

It probably isn’t a surprise that Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration Department chair Dana Kivel would be honored with the 2007-08 Outstanding Community Service Award—she’s been involved in community service her entire life.

Her commitment to Sacramento began shortly after she moved here in 2003 and bought a home in Oak Park. “I realized pretty quickly we were sort of the poor stepchild of Sacramento,” Kivel says of the neighborhood.

The disparity between Oak Park and surrounding neighborhoods was obvious, she says. There were people with drug and alcohol problems and no place to go, Kivel says, adding that she spent a lot of her first year chasing drug dealers away from the front of her house.

Moving was not an option. Kivel and her partner liked the old home they were in and enjoyed the diversity of the neighborhood.

So Kivel began her own effort to improve the area. She began attending Oak Park Neighborhood Association meetings, getting elected to its board in 2005. And she led the way to get the city to close down a liquor store that was a local hangout for drug dealers. “That changed the dynamic of the neighborhood,” she says.

Not everyone agreed with her work. In 2006 her house was firebombed. Fortunately the device bounced off a window and caused minimal exterior damage. A neighbor with mental health and drug and alcohol problems was eventually arrested along with two of his friends.

Continuing her efforts, Kivel was elected to be the representative and then appointed by the mayor as a member of the Oak Park Redevelopment Advisory Commission two years ago and later tapped for a spot on Sacramento’s Redevelopment Advisory Commission, a panel that oversees distribution of $20 million in tax increment funds. The commission recently supported a major renovation project for the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor.

She’s also working with a small group of police officers on a support program to provide sex workers a drop-in center that is a safe, non-judgmental space where the women can get HIV testing and alcohol and drug program referrals.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t get engaged with the community and participate in different activities,” Kivel says.

That outlook has been with her all along. “I grew up in the Jewish tradition, and I really took seriously the mandate of ‘tikuun olam,’ which means ‘to heal the world,’” she says.

Kivel believes her approach to life has a direct impact on how she interacts with her students, many of whom wondered why she didn’t just pack up and leave when faced with the problems in her neighborhood. “How could I do anything to change it if I left?” Kivel says. “Maybe by doing the things I do, it gets the students to see there are other ways of doing things.”

And when reviewing students’ projects, Kivel uses that sense of social justice to make sure the programs they develop are accessible for all people.

Kivel says she was honored, appreciative and a little embarrassed about receiving the award. She adds that her students are the most rewarding aspect of teaching. “I enjoy when they get the connections between things and they start asking these really great and profound questions.”