The Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University is the site of the World Headquarters of the Friends World Program and serves as one of Friends World’s five major worldwide learning Centers along with Cost Rica, Japan, China, and India. The Brooklyn Campus is distinguished by dynamic curricula reflecting the great urban community it serves. Distinctive programs encompass the arts and media, natural sciences, business, social policy, urban education, the health professions, pharmacy and health sciences, all on a pluralistic campus that draws insight and strength from differences. Founded in 1926, Brooklyn is the original campus of Long Island University, and the only one located in New York City. Its 11-acre site in downtown Brooklyn is convenient to all subway lines, most bus lines and the Long Island Railroad. Construction is nearly complete on a new performing arts center, which will include the 350 seat Kumble Theater. A $40 million athletics, recreation and wellness center is also being built to add to the already impressive array of state-of-the-art facilities on campus. Students have a number of housing options that include: living in the on- campus dormitory, off-campus student residences, rooms in private homes and sharing apartments.

In addition to serving as the administrative World Headquarters for the Friends World Program, the Brooklyn Campus serves as the New York City global learning center, affording students a unique opportunity, through the New York Term, to pursue the study of urban and metropolitan issues; including population diversity, cultural activity, economic and political perspectives. Students learn through a combination of experiential seminars and traditional classes along with service learning and a chance to do independent study. The core class, the Friends World City Seminar, is an experiential course that is created in collaboration with students. The purpose of the seminar is to attain an intimate knowledge of metropolitan New York and Brooklyn through exploration of neighborhoods, meeting people from diverse backgrounds, field visits and service learning. Together students and faculty design experiences that explore questions, such as: What makes a good city? How do people define the culture of the city and how does the city define the culture of the people?

The seminar is complemented by courses taught at the Brooklyn LIU urban campus in areas such as social anthropology, cultural history, urban studies, creative arts and writing. Students may also elect to carry out a guided independent study or take an additional course of their choice. Service learning is an essential part of the program. Students are privileged to interact with local community members through grassroots organizations and make global connections through national and international institutions. The New York City Center on the Brooklyn Campus is also the site at which Friends World student carry out work on the Senior Capstone Semester, the final stage in their degree studies.

"After a year and a half of studying in the Friends World Program I realized that I had lived in four different countries (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, The U.S. and Russia) and spoken four different languages. My area of concentration was Child Welfare and in all of those countries I had been working with children in need. After a while I realized that I needed a little more of a traditional education if I was really going to be able to assist the children, and I also wanted to work with kids in my own language and culture. With those realizations in mind I set foot for the first time ever to New York City.

Within two weeks of my arrival I was taking psychology classes at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. Taking classes at LIU as a Friends World Student helped me bypass all the classes I didn’t need and allowed me to take the classes I really wanted that would eventually supplement my future internships and career. I also had the advantage of working with an excellent advisor who was able to guide me and push me academically to take an idea or thought a little bit further than I would have. I started interning with the Vera Institute of Justice working on a project called Adolescent Portable Therapy. This project was geared toward helping kids involved in the juvenile justice system overcome their drug use by allowing them a counselor who would visit them in detention and also help them once they were released back into the community. I was an intake interviewer. In this role I visited every juvenile detention facility in New York and spoke with kids involved with this system from every background imaginable. This internship left me with a determination to change the system which locks up minority children for nonviolent crimes at an astounding rate.

For my next semester, I decided that I also wanted to focus on some international issues involving children’s rights. I was accepted as an intern at ECPAT-USA (End Child Prostitution, Pornography and the Trafficking of Children-USA). This was an international organization which focused on trying to stop Americans from going overseas to abuse children, as well as trying to stop children and women from being sold into human slavery within the United States. I worked on several projects while I was at ECPAT-USA. The first project I worked on was with the Community Response to Trafficking project where I helped reach out to the Russian Community in Brighton Beach in order to educate community leaders on how to identify and help victims of trafficking. Later I wrote a curriculum for children in the Untied States educating them on the Convention on the Rights of the Child which is a UN document which recognizes that children are human beings and being children they have special rights. (The United States remains one of two countries in the world who still hasn’t signed this document). I decided to stay with ECPAT-USA to conduct my Senior Project which was to help organize the preliminary meetings for a United Nations study on Violence Against Children. For this part of the internship I worked closely with child activists from all around the United States including people in UNICEF and Human Rights Watch.

After graduating from Friends World I still live in New York. I believe the work that I did in the Untied States has given me credentials and experience that were very important to assisting the disadvantaged children of the world. I am currently working with the Vera Institute of Justice again on a new project called Esperanza-Hope. This project is an intense counseling program for kids who normally would be sent to jail. While the kids participate in our program they will stay with their families, receive counseling, go to school and participate in after school activities.  In other words, instead of simply locking children away this program actually gives them a chance to lead a positive life. I am an intake interviewer, so I meet with the kids and their families and then I testify in court on the child’s behalf. This type of program has never existed in New York before, and so like many of my experiences with Friends World before I find myself in the forefront of creating social change. "
--Julia Schafer, class of 2004