JANUARY 20, 2021 — When Katie Vela ’14 was completing her Master in Public Administration degree at UTSA in 2014, she never thought she would end up leading one of the most impactful non-profits in San Antonio a few years later.
In October of 2020, Vela was named executive director of the South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (SARAH) and launched a movement to end youth homelessness—the #WESAY Movement to House all Youth and young adults.
“I definitely can't take credit for developing the movement, because it was really something that a collaborative group developed,” Vela said. “We have our Youth Action board, which are youth and young adults who have experienced homelessness, and they guide all of our policy decisions.” In addition to the board, SARAH works to bring together many youth homeless service providers and stakeholders.
In 2019, SARAH was awarded a $6.88 million demonstration program grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This flexible funding allows SARAH to decide how to build a system that prevents and ends youth homelessness. During the eight-month planning process, the team designed an ideal system and decided how to allocate the funds locally.
“Part of what we learned is that it is difficult for youth and young adults to know where to access services easily, and also just that there wasn't awareness,” Vela said. Thus, the #WESAY Movement became part funding, part awareness campaign.
Vela’s path to SARAH wasn’t straightforward. As a student at UTSA, she wasn’t sure what her career path should be. “I knew kind of broadly that I wanted to help the community, but I wasn't sure in what way,” Vela said.
She credits the MPA program with connecting her to opportunities she otherwise wouldn’t know about.
“I made connections in the community that were really helpful—with the local HUD field office, management analysts at the City of San Antonio, and people who worked in nonprofits that helped me figure out the lay of the land of the public sector in San Antonio,” Vela said. “I ended up completing the nonprofit management and leadership concentration, which helped me realize the nonprofit sector was the best fit for what I was interested in.”
Vela has worked for SARAH since its founding in 2015. She says the time has flown by and she loves the impactful, meaningful work she gets to be a part of.
“I love getting to work with different partners, all with different perspectives, and building a consensus around a way to move forward where we can make an impact,” Vela said. “What I've learned about homelessness is you need partners providing high quality services, but you also all have to work together to make it an easy system for the people that need help.”
A rewarding connection between Vela’s work at SARAH and her education at UTSA is that UTSA is a part of SARAH’s stakeholder and planning groups. The university has partnered with SARAH to launch a rapid rehousing program to support youth and young adults with a history of foster care who are pursuing post-secondary education and are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
“It is really exciting and unique that UTSA is going to be a housing provider,” Vela said. “I think that has the potential to be a national model.”
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Día en la Sombrilla, formerly Fiesta UTSA, is a festival hosted each spring as a part of Fiesta® San Antonio events. Sponsored by Roadrunner Productions, the event features music, food, confetti, games, event t-shirts, and more.
Sombrilla Plaza, Main CampusCovidence is a systematic & scoping review tool used to streamline the process of screening and reviewing articles. Using this software, research teams can easily import studies, perform automatic deduplication, and extract data using templates. This workshop will show attendees how to start a review in Covidence, add collaborators, and get started on screening.
Virtual (Zoom)In this workshop, attendees will be introduced to Pandas, a Python tool for working with data easily. It makes it simple to organize and analyze information when data is organized and categorized, like spreadsheets or tables.
Group Spot B, John Peace LibraryEach fall and spring semester, students convene at the Main Campus at UTSA with booths, ideas and prototypes. A crowd of judges, local organizations, students, faculty and sponsors walk around and talk to the students about their projects and ask questions. Students get the real-life experience of "pitching" their project with hopes of getting funding or support to move to the next level.
UTSA Convocation Center, Main CampusJoin the doctoral candidates for the Doctoral Conferreal Ceremony and celebrate their accomplishments.
Arts Building Recital Hall, Main CampusCelebrate the graduates from the Carlos Alvarez College of Business, College of Education and Human Development, Margie and Bill Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design and University College.
AlamodomeCelebrate the graduates from the College for Health, Community and Policy, College of Liberal and Fine Arts and College of Sciences.
AlamodomeThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
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