Service to all Mankind

Pearci Bastiany

B.A.Marketing, Public Service and Community Engagement Minor ’17

My name is Pearci Bastiany and I am a senior majoring in Marketing here at the University of San Francisco. Last year, I made the decision to add the Public Service and Community Engagement minor to my degree. I did not make this decision lightly, as I had just switched my major from Accounting to Marketing at the conclusion of my sophomore year.

I was initially introduced to the PSCE minor, as well as to the USF in DC program, by Star Moore of the Leo T. McCarthy Center. She came to present to my Esther Madriz Diversity Scholars cohort during class, and I was initially apprehensive in getting involved. I must admit that what attracted me to the minor was the fact that most of the prerequisite courses had been fulfilled by classes I had already taken at USF. All I had to do was participate in the USF in DC program, and then I would just have two courses to complete for the minor. Regardless of my reason for picking up the PSCE minor, I have found that the PSCE related courses I have taken thus far have definitely been centered around service to others within the community.

My first PSCE course, Latin@ American Performance and Culture, was a service-learning class in which I volunteered at the Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts. During my sophomore year I took part in the Esther Madriz Diversity Scholars living learning community in which we volunteered with Up On Top, an after school program for youth in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. The semester before my USF in DC experience, I volunteered at the Asian Community Garden in the San Francisco Bayview District and the SF-Marin Food Bank. Overall, I believe I have performed close to 40 hours of community service since arriving at USF, with the majority of those hours being tied to PSCE related courses.

Although I was already passionate about doing community service prior to arriving at USF, I believe the Public Service and Community Engagement minor helped me to understand the importance of serving those in need within our communities.

With seven months left until graduation, I can now confidently say adding the Public Service and Community Engagement minor has changed my life in the most profound of ways. I have utilized my public service internship in Washington, D.C. and combined that with my passion for service to the community to create my very own non-profit here in San Francisco. It is called Operation Homecoming, and its purpose is to provide free temporary housing for homeless veterans living in San Francisco. I first created this plan in Washington and presented it as a legislative memorandum to the director of my Congressional office. Since returning from D.C., I went through the steps to turn my idea into a reality and on August 1st, Operation Homecoming became an officially registered corporation in the state of California. Upon graduation, this non-profit will become my life’s work and I aim to end veteran homelessness in San Francisco by the age of 25. This is how I am going to change the world from here.