Hi! My name is Brittany Maslowsky, and I'm 23 years old. My family lives in Fairfax, VA, but I currently reside in Philadelphia, PA as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, where I'm working towards earning my M.S.Ed in Human Development! I went to undergrad at the University of Virginia, where I majored in Psychology and minored in Spanish. I am interested in many, many things (biking among them), so here are two things chosen at random: I play the clarinet and once participated in Baltimore's Annual Kinetic Sculpture Race, which I feel is worthy of noting because it was an incredibly goofy, inspiring, challenging, and fun experience that not that many people outside of the Baltimore area know about (and one they should try)!
Between graduation from UVA and graduate school at UPenn, I moved to Brooklyn, NY to dedicate a year of my life to service as an AmeriCorps volunteer with City Year, a national non-profit organization for 17-24 year olds. With City Year, I served on a diverse team of ten of my peers as a Corps Member at P.S. 213 in East New York, Brookyln. At P.S. 213, my team and I worked together to create lesson plans, run lessons and afterschool programs, and promote literacy and community awareness as mentors and tutors. In addition to our in-school work, we planned and held events within the East New York community, which ranged from movie nights to community service days. It was inspiring to see the students, teachers, parents, and other community members come together with us to work at making the community the best it could be and inspire a belief that we can change how things are; we can do anything if we work together.
Working in East New York not only opened my eyes and allowed me hands-on experience with working to supplement and improve the NYC education system, but I was also able to experience the importance of community and see the relationships between education, housing, and opportunity. These relationships were also evident in Bangladesh, where I helped to build a septic tank for an all-girls orphanage over the summer of 2008 -- it was fascinating to see what a big difference improved housing and education made for the families there!
I have been dreaming about Bike and Build for the last year and a half -- a dream that has grown to wildly exciting proportions as I've become more involved with service and a growing love of biking. Though most of my experiences have not been related to construction projects or affordable housing, I am excited about recreating the good feelings, relationships, and fun that I felt during Spring Break my fourth year of college, when I worked alongside a group of peers to help a family renovate and add-on to their trailer home in South Carolina (my first affordable housing project!).
I drove across country twice with my family while growing up, so I'm stoked about the opportunity to see the nation from outside a car! I look forward to learning from the people in the communities we stop in, bonding with my cycling peers from all over the country, and spreading all around good feelings wherever we go!!
A man named James E. Starrs once said, "Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling," and a woman named Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." I think Bike and Build marries these ideas nicely -- who says you can't have fun while making a difference?
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