Anea has worked directly with young students and their parents while teaching choir, cooking, and music at Henry C. Lea Elementary School in West Philadelphia. As a strong advocate for students and their families, she realized that parents and families were often disengaged from their children’s educational experience, so she helped the school create innovative strategies and programs to involve parents in their child’s education. This opportunity was possible thanks to an internship at Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, and was inspired by her own experience as a student. The Netter Center provides a wide variety of opportunities, like Anea’s, to apply classroom learning to community engagement through Academically Based Community Service courses that allow students to bridge theory to real-world application.

Anea discovered that she really enjoyed advocacy work and decided to explore sociology as a discipline to understand the underlying forces and movements associated with class inequality and social justice.

Anea is a prominent voice on campus for first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students. Her advocacy work began in her first year when she and other students approached administrators to bring attention to issues unique to the FGLI community. She became a board member of Penn First, a student group that serves as a support for other students. The group worked with university administrators to create the FGLI student program, which provides services to more than 1,000 students a year. When Penn hosted the fourth annual 1vyG Conference, Anea served as student co-chair.

Anea was inspired to learn more about how cities work and how people function within them while taking a class called Urban Sociology in her first year. After taking this course, she chose to work as an intern for the City of Philadelphia, and to pursue an Urban Studies major in addition to Sociology.

She worked with two Philadelphia City Council members as a sophomore: Kenyatta Johnson, who represents her home district, and Helen Gym, the first Asian American woman to serve on Philadelphia’s City Council. The internships gave her an opportunity to interact directly with constituents, and to gain a unique view of public policy affecting her hometown. As part of her internship, she assisted with drafting official city resolutions, conducting policy research, and helping organize constituent town halls.

Growing up in Philadelphia inspired Anea to give back, especially to her local community. Her work with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, for City Council members, and for Research for Action, a nonprofit education research organization, have provided an opportunity to make a lasting impact. Anea hopes to attend law school, where she can continue her exploration of social justice in order to change low-income communities, and support those who may not be able to advocate for themselves.

After losing her parents during her first year at Penn, Anea took steps toward her own healing through a connection with children in Rwanda. Through Penn Hillel’s Moral Voices Fellowship, Moore spent 10 days at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, a 144-acre rural residential community designed to help heal youth who lost families in the 1994 genocide. In Rwanda, Moore connected with young students through teaching, assisting with meal preparation, playing sports, and attending art classes and talent shows. The experience taught her many things, including that resiliency is critical in the development of both macro- and micro-structures, from countries to individuals.