Ever wonder how you alone could make a difference? Let Dominic Jocas show you how.
I’m Liam Dunne, interviewing Dominic Jocas — a freshman at the University of Southern California.
A quick note on Dom – I came to Western Reserve Academy as a junior, and some of the first people I met were on the soccer field. Dom was the manager, and after practices I’d help him collect the balls that had been kicked across our campus at his expense. We didn’t hang out in the typical sense, but our relationship was productive in other ways. Every other month or so, we’d stumble across each other and within minutes we’d be deep in lively conversation. We discussed politics, culture, our family backgrounds – everything, really. These discussions were sporadic, but I think that’s part of what made them so impactful to me.
I remember him mentioning his father,
who immigrated here from Lithuania. He left for several reasons: Dom’s mother (who he met in the Peace Corps) lived in America; he also felt there was no upward social mobility as the country established its newfound independence from the Soviet Union. With his parents having seen vicious cycles of poverty and participating in the Peace Corps, protesting human rights violations was part of the family’s modus operandi.
I walked away from each conversation with Dom feeling excited, alive, the way you do when someone shares their experience with you in an honest and open way, and you’ve learned more about the world, life, and your own passions. As expected, this conversation turned out to be just as fulfilling as the rest of them.
Liam: Plastic for the People was your first initiative; let’s talk about that one first. How’d you come up with this idea? What was your motivation?
Dom: I was working in Ghana during the summer of 2018, and one of the first things I noticed was the intense pollution everywhere. Plastic bags in their rivers, and across the landscape. I thought, “Why are these plastic bags not being recycled?” It seemed everything else was recycled, and it turned out most plastic bags can’t be recycled because they tangle recycling machines. I immediately started thinking, “How can I curve that — how can I incorporate plastic bags into something else?” Originally, I wanted to make bikes out of plastic bags but that proved to be incredibly challenging — I needed all sorts of equipment and money that I did not have. I kept thinking about ways to make solid, rigid structures out of these very flimsy plastic bags and you must melt down so much plastic, so I knew I had to readjust my goal.
So I thought, “What if I work with the material — use its flexibility and textile strength to my advantage?” I could make this leather-like material which essentially serves as fabric — simply replacing it with a plastic iteration. I came up with this idea in February of 2019, my sophomore year. I launched it at Compass Expo (the same program allowing me to make this magazine) and a lot of people seemed interested, so I was able to fill a couple orders.
Liam: I saw that you donate the proceeds from Plastic for the People to the same community you worked with in Ghana.
Dom: Yes, they go to the school I was working at. The situation is essentially that this community had a larger building for their school until they lost the lease for that property and were all kicked out. Now the teachers are forced to teach 12 different grades all in a single tin-roof shed, which is, you know, basically impossible.
I wanted to do whatever I could to help — I realized that if I’m going to use what I’ve learned in Ghana to build this project, I should be giving the benefits back to the community. So yeah, the proceeds go to The Future Leaders UCC School in Ghana.
Liam: It’s the antithesis of a vicious cycle, aiding the environment and disparaged communities each step of the way.
Have you been able to broaden this initiative? Are more people working with you now than when you attended Reserve?
Dom: Not yet, but the whole project took an uncomfortably long hiatus because — and this is the thing about Reserve: Please, please don’t take the maker-spaces available at Reserve for granted. The kind of access you have to maker-spaces at Reserve is one of a kind. I could go there during my free periods and have access to nearly anything I would need for my work. Then I moved to L.A. At USC the maker-spaces are almost kept away from students — you have to pay to get in and the hours are unreliable. It’s all very hard to access. I haven’t been able to grow my project because of that restriction. I applied to a program that would, in theory, grant me access to maker-spaces on campus. If all goes well, next year I should be able to grow my project.
Liam: During your hiatus you started another project though: AYU-Direct! I know that the program is aimed to address the gentrification issue in the community surrounding USC, so I imagine the project began when you got there?
It’s actually pronounced Ayudirect. It’s a play on the Spanish word ‘ayudar’ — to help
-Dominic Jocas
It officially started in early January. The project is a request-based service that allows the gentrified community around USC to ask for resources from USC students. My motivation behind Ayudirect came from an encounter on my way to USC for the first time. I was coming to campus from the airport in an Uber. The area surrounding USC has a very high homeless population, and as we were coming to a stop, my Uber driver said, “Yeah, L.A. is nice and all,” then looks over at a homeless man sleeping on a bench, and said, “except for these decrepit pieces of sh*t taking up sidewalk space.” And I thought, “Oh my God, that was the cruelest thing I’ve heard spoken about someone.” And it was just an offhand, passing comment to him. I thought, “Wow! They actually just hate homeless people here.”
So at USC you get 19 meal swipes a week. They’re not restricted. At the beginning of the week we have 19 swipes and at the end of the week they restart, so if you don’t use them, they go to waste. I was thinking,
“I have my own apartment and I’m cooking in here a lot. How can I make sure these meals don’t go to waste?”
-Dominic Jocas
So I would use my meal swipes, walk around the outskirts of campus, and hand the meals out. I found that a lot of these people that were close to being homeless or were homeless felt like they had no one to talk to, no one to listen to them. That’s the problem with donations: You give your food, but it’s impersonal. It’s like, Okay, take your food and leave, we still want nothing to do with you. I wanted to make these interactions personal; I wanted to not only give them a meal but share a meal with them. I’d approach someone with a meal and say, “Hey, want to have dinner?” and we’d eat.
What resulted from this, in my mind, was a three-pronged project:
- A) How could I get USC students to integrate with the community around USC more, not just with other USC students?
- B) How could I streamline getting people the things they need in a quicker way, so I don’t have to track them down a week later?
- C) How could I use the university’s resources and the student body as a crowdfunding/monetary resource to help the homeless?
Without fail, all of them have these fascinating stories.
-Dominic Jocas
They’re always dispensing this wisdom and it shows that there’s always just such a richness in helping people in this way. I wished other people could see this. And also, when you’re sharing a meal with someone and they don’t have shoes, you’re going to want to go out and buy them shoes. So I would go out and buy them shoes or whatever they needed, but the problem is that they’re always moving. LAPD is constantly kicking them out of wherever they’re staying — it’s hard to find them again after I meet them. So, I would go to the street I saw my friend at, with the shoes I’d bought them, and they wouldn’t be there. I’d have to patrol the streets in the area, hoping I’d come across them again. Sometimes they’d reappear, sometimes they’d never come back.
It’s one thing for me to be organizing all of the donations and drop-offs,
but again, I wanted there to be a personal aspect to this project. With a 1:1 relationship between a request and someone fulfilling that request, the interaction is significantly more personal and meaningful to those in need. For example, one person could request a jacket, and then someone at USC would be like, “Oh, I have that jacket” and the request is fulfilled. So, I wanted to make a way to facilitate that exchange, which is the idea behind Ayudirect.
Liam: It’s such an important exchange. Homelessness is generally seen as a problem,
and so to make it an interaction where you’re actually sharing yourself is so much more generous — in a personal sense. Just being able to pipeline all these resources that people have and networking them to willingly provide the necessary aid is such a beautiful, selfless process. Has it taken off? Do you have a good amount of people working with you on this?
Dom: Yeah, so obviously it’s not as big as I hoped. The success depends heavily on having a large following base and having a large crowdfund network and that’s been hard to attain. If I post a cookout it turns out well, a lot of people show up to help. If I post that I need food swipes for a food run, people will step up. As far as non-food-related stuff goes, still no one has reached out. Right now, I’m just trying to get more followers, particularly from the local area.
Liam: You have such an interesting, direct approach, and these projects are beautiful. I think this is exactly what the world needs and I’m just so impressed. Thank you so much for this call, I hope both these projects turn out even better than your aspirations for them.
Of course, thank you for caring.
-Dominic Jocas