The Umoja Village at Los Medanos College feels more like a family room than a campus site. Students come in and out, chatting at the main table or laughing on the couches with laptops open. In the middle of it all, Umoja coordinator Jamila Stewart moves from conversation to conversation, checking in on students and offering support.

“I hope students feel like we’re their family,” Stewart said. “This very much feels like a living room at times, and it gets loud.”

Stewart’s job is to make the village, and the Umoja program, a home base for Black and Pan-African students navigating college. Her days rarely look the same. She juggles meetings, event planning, administrative work and unexpected student crises.

“Sometimes students are in crisis, and you have to stop what you’re doing,” she said. “But at the very least, I’m gonna laugh with students every day”

That laughter is intentional. Stewart, who grew up in Oakland, says she’s always been drawn to Black history, politics and community. The word Umoja means unity, and Stewart saw the program as part of a bigger effort to uplift the Black global community.

“I’ve always wanted to see us elevate,” she said. “We come from a really beautiful community that’s sometimes misunderstood and had a lot of healing to do.”

Earlier in the fall semester, that unity showed up by an ambassador-led event on pre-colonial African civilizations where students shared food from across the African diaspora.

 “Oftentimes we hear about Africa or Black people in America, and the story starts with slavery,” Stewart said. “It was good to hear the stories from the civilizations before and people had fun. People were hanging out a long time. They enjoyed the food.”

During the fall semester, Stewart traveled with students to the statewide Umoja conference in San Jose, where programs across California gathered for workshops, keynotes, dancing and Afrofuturism-focused activities.

“They came back understanding that Umoja is bigger than LMC,” she said. “There was a lot of Afrofuturism, a lot of music. We had a really great time.”

Stewart did not initially plan on a career in education. Years ago, she was a UC student who plans “weren’t going the way that I thought they were.” After leaving university, she took a stable federal job but quickly realized it lacked purpose.

“I knew I couldn’t do this until retirement,” she said. “Once I learned the job and there wasn’t too much that was going to change, it’s not what I wanted to do.”

She enrolled in night classes at LMC to finish general education requirements, often arriving in her work uniform. As her job hours increased, she began missing classes, eventually choosing between money and education she’d always wanted.

“I chose school,” she said. “That was a sacrifice because I was making pretty good money, but I always wanted to finish school.”

At LMC, Stewart increased her course load, joined student leadership and later became a student worker and hourly employee while finishing her degree. As a student, she joined a group that spent a summer designing what a Black student support program could look like. An idea supported by Peter Garcia, LMC’s President at the time.

“I’ve kind of been a part of Umoja before I was even an employee here,” Stewart said. “We tried to flesh out what a program that would  support Black students would look like.”

Since then, Stewart has served in many roles — tutor, administrative support, steering committee member, part-time and full-time staff. She eventually earned her master’s degree and went on to teach African American studies and English classes.

Stewart sees her work as deeply relational. She describes her role as “part coordinator, part big cousin or auntie.”

One of the stories that stayed with her involves a returning student with a child who struggled through an accelerated algebra course.

“They were really on the borderline of not passing,” Stewart said. “I stayed really late. I was long off the clock, but I’m like, ‘You can do this, I’ll stay with you.’”

The student passed, graduated from LMC and transferred to Cal State East Bay. Later, overwhelmed by university technology, she returned for help.

“She stuck with it because she knew she could do it and she experienced that here,” she said. Today, the student is on track to finish a master’s in social work.

Working with students has shaped Stewart, too. Though introverted, she says the community around Umoja pushes her to grow.

“Sometimes I don’t feel like doing stuff, and I see students who are struggling or don’t have income, and I’m inspired by my students’ resilience,” Stewart said.

Looking ahead, Stewart said she hopes LMC expands academic programs, especially trade programs and offers clearer explanations of how majors connect to real careers.

“It’s challenging for students to understand how their degree works in the real world,” she said. “I’d like to see that take a larger stage.”

Above all, Stewart hopes students leave Umoja with pride in their identities and a commitment to give back.

“I hope they remember to be in community,” she said. “To support their community, to be part of that healing, and to remember to celebrate together and have fun together everybody can play a role, and everybody needs help.”