A Summer of Service: Eva Kasal on Advocacy with Sanctuary for Families

Each summer, Community Impact selects a few undergraduates from Columbia and Barnard to participate in the annual George Van Amson (GVA) Fellowship, which has successfully aided non-profit organizations in the tri-state area for nearly 20 years. 

As part of the fellowship, recipients are provided with summer housing and a $5,000 stipend to support them in pursuing meaningful service within their areas of interest. These focuses can range anywhere from healthcare and food insecurity to social justice, and more.

This year, on Friday, September 25, the GVA Fellows gave presentations showcasing the work and the invaluable lessons they will carry forward in their academic and professional careers. Over 50 people attended this year’s celebration, including the program’s namesake, George Van Amson (CC’74), Columbia University Trustee Emeritus.

In this series, we’ll hear directly from the 2026 GVA Fellows about their experiences and the impact of their work. First, Eva Kasal (CC’28) shares her experience working with Sanctuary for Families.

Eva Kasal (CC’28): Sanctuary for Families

Eva Kasal’s CC’28 interest in non-profit work began in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. As a teenager, she volunteered the Women's Safe House, an organization that empowers women and families to rebuild their lives free of domestic and sexual abuse.

“I was starting to become increasingly aware of the effect and prevalence that intimate partner violence has in people's lives, even those that we know [who are] very close to us,” Kasal said. 

Working with her high school art teacher, Kasal and a friend decided to start an after-school art empowerment program for the children living at the shelter, which eventually morphed into an annual summer art camp. Kasal believes this experience ingrained a special passion within her to care for families, especially vulnerable children.

“That led me to working with Sanctuary for Families, the oldest and largest service in New York City that provides crisis interventions, emergency housing, shelter, legal, medical — all these different things for survivors of intimate partner violence [and] gender-based violence,” Kasal said. “I wanted to bring [the Women’s Safe House art] empowerment sessions to Sanctuary for Families in New York.”

Kasal decided to pitch the idea of incorporating an art empowerment program into Sanctuary for Families’ childcare and children’s activity groups. After making sure that every art lesson was both trauma-informed and encouraging, the organization agreed to her idea and she quickly got to work. 

“One eye-opening part I remember was [when] we made this safe space project, and at the end, we gave the opportunity for people to go around in a circle and share anything about what their dream room, if they created, meant to them,” Kasal said. “There was one boy who, although he wasn't very talkative during the rest of the class, raised his hand and said, to him, it meant peace. That was all he said. Based on that one interaction, I knew that what the work I was doing was effective.”

The GVA Fellowship provided Kasal, a medical humanities major, with a new perspective on the non-profit field and just how many disciplines can impact an organization’s mission. 

“I was able to learn not just about the amount of different careers that there are in the non-profit space, but additionally how there are many interdisciplinary fields that are involved in the non-profit space,” Kasal said. “It's not just social work. It's not just law. It's all these different teams working together that are able to make this possible on the back-end. I think that's incredibly valuable.”

Reflecting on this experience solidified her intent to practice medicine after she graduates, where she can serve patients in her community whether their situations are short-term or long-term. 

“The GVA Fellowship offered me and allowed me to see the role that I play in the grander scheme of non-profit work, of crisis-based intervention work for immigrant violence and gender-based violence survivors,” Kasal said. “Being able to reflect on how I've changed throughout these volunteering experiences and reflect on how these agencies run have made me a lot more cognizant of the field as a whole.”