Last weekend, the Fairview Youth in Action internship hosted its fifth-annual Walk Fairview Day in Hillsborough. The day closes out the summer program by highlighting research projects from its high school students, who study and address what improvements they want to see in the Fairview community.
Led by the FYIA interns, Saturday featured a guided neighborhood walk around the historically Black neighborhood, where Fairview residents, members of Hillsborough’s town board, and Orange County commissioners heard various project proposals from this year’s group.
Fairview Youth In Action Interns Naviyah Bowe and Natalie Artica’s project proposal is to add a mosaic mural to the Dorothy N. Johnson Community Center. (Image via UNC FFORC).
The event started at the Dorothy N. Johnson Community Center, a spot where interns Naviyah Bowe and Natalie Artica are working to add a colorful mural.
“Last year we started advocating for murals in our community and we are proud to say we still are this year,” Bowe told the crowd. “Why murals? Because around Fairview, you see a lot of dull, dark, [and] plain colors, and honestly those colors can make people feel unseen, unrepresented, and even a little disconnected from the community. We wanted to change that.”
FYIA interns Amari Poteat and Emiliano Martinez Deloera’s proposal is to improve Fairview Park, including adding soccer goals, bringing back the Fairview Live program, and installing signage for existing walking trails.
Other intern proposals focused on bringing soccer goals and amenities to Fairview Park, expanding neighborhood access to healthy foods, and finding ways to get residents more involved with the community center. Each research team also worked to engage directly with the residents through surveys, workshops, and interviews.
For the mural, many surveyed residents expressed wanting the artwork to highlight local history and heritage. Bowe said she and Artica also interviewed the Hillsborough Arts Council and Eno Art Mill as part of their research.
“A special thank you to Stephanie Trueblood who brought amazing ideas and energy to our project, and to Katie Murray who helped us understand the process of creating a mural, and trust me, there are a lot of steps,” Bowe continued. “And now, because of [the community’s] support and the help of all our coordinators and mentors, we are thrilled to announce that Fairview is getting a mosaic mural.”
The day also celebrated completed projects from former interns and featured tables for the program’s partners to share community resources. Throughout the internship, partners like UNC’s Food, Fitness, and Opportunity Research Collaborative (FFORC) and Habitat For Humanity host workshops for the interns with the goal of connecting them to wider community resources and helping them become more civilly engaged.
Valeria Guillen Landeros and Arianna Mendez’s proposal is to improve food access information in the community, making food distribution boxes, bringing back nutrition education classes, and creating a Fairview farmers market. (Image via UNC FFORC).
The 10-week internship started in 2019 as a grassroots effort by a group of young residents in the neighborhood who wanted to organize a litter pick-up along the roadsides. The now-paid program is open to high school-aged students living or connected to the Fairview Community. A graduating senior, Nicole Bocanegra has been a FYIA intern all four years of high school.
“I have a lot of close, family friends that live in this neighborhood, so I’ve gone to this neighborhood my entire life,” she said.
Bocanegra said she has loved seeing everything the interns advocate for come into fruition, like a bus shelter and renovations to the community center. This year, she served as the Youth in Action Coordinator, helping to lead the group and organize the culminating event, which she said featured more partners and community attendees than in the past.
Walk Fairview also included the unveiling of completed FYIA projects, like a Little Free Library now located outside the community center. (Photo via Emma Cooke/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
“The most special part [of the program] is how together everyone is, like how community-based it really is,” she added. “Where I live, we don’t really know our neighbors, but I like how here everybody knows each other. That’s the best part of this community.”
Helping hand out jump ropes and bike helmets at its table, UNC FFORC program lead Molly De Marco said while Walk Fairview is always a happy day for the residents and those close to it, this year’s could also be the last.
“All of [this] could end because our national SNAP-Ed program is eliminated, and the funding ends October 1,” De Marco said. “We’re trying to figure out if we can request funds from the cities we work with, maybe working with the state on funding, but at this point, this program may end.”
The internship is just one community-based effort funded by FFORC’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), alongside Women on the Move and the Fairview Community Garden. But a recent federal elimination of the program’s funding means FFORC is seeking alternative funding for its 2026 and future initiatives.
“It’s heartbreaking,” De Marco continued. “Partially because it’s our careers, right, but we’ve also been working with some of our communities for ten years. These aren’t new partnerships. They run pretty deep, and we’ve been able to really focus on what the communities need for how we determine funding, so that just goes away.”
Having attended every Walk Fairview Day, Hillsborough Mayor Mark Bell called the community’s enthusiasm for the internship program “inspiring” and shared how he is optimistic about the program’s future.
“It’s really sad to see that Fairview has been hit by these federal funding cuts,” Bell said. “And being so close to the community and seeing all these events, I know what the value is of those investments. I’ve had conversations with other elected officials about ideas around how to help make up for that funding. So I don’t think this will be the last Walk Fairview Day.”
Featured image via UNC FFORC.
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