Miriam Torres understands how important it is to have access to clean water.
As a child, she split her time between a lush, green area in southern Mexico with an abundance of water and a poor town in northern Mexico where water had to be trucked in each day.
She said her interest in urban planning and environmental justice is a result of not always having access to open spaces or water as a child.
Torres will graduate this week with a master’s degree in urban planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
She has spent the last two years working on part of her degree to resolve the disparity in water quality and access.
For her degree, Torres developed plans for parks in South Central Los Angeles and conducted research on how to replicate the project’s successes elsewhere – all while raising her 5-year-old son, Louka.
By obtaining a master’s degree, Torres said she also hopes to set a positive example for her son and other single mothers.
Torres said she hopes to lessen the contrast of water access between the different socioeconomic groups she experienced as a child, which led her to study environmental justice as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley.
After graduating from UC Berkeley, Torres worked for six years as the Southern California program director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, a nonprofit organization.
During her time at the coalition, Torres said she worked hard but received little pay, and kept the idea of returning to school for a master’s degree in the back of her mind.
Torres said that by leaving her job with a steady income to attend UCLA, she made an investment in herself and her family’s future.
She said she hopes to buy a house by herself and live and work where she wants.
“Some people are risk-averse,” Torres said. “Maybe I’m not.”
From her time at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Torres said she has learned to expand her work beyond the subjects she had training in as an undergraduate student, especially by connecting her knowledge of environmental justice to the field of urban planning.
“Most of the injustices I looked at were the result of planning issues,” she said. “I’ve learned to explore other areas instead of just specializing, so (coming to UCLA) has really opened up options for me.”
Torres said she left the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water because she wanted to be better able to support her child after graduation. She decided to go to school now because her son is young and does not have a busy schedule yet.
When Torres comes to UCLA, she brings him to the on-campus preschool, so they are never far apart, she said.
“I feel really lucky and blessed that (my son) can come here with me,” Torres said. “We can ride to campus together, which lets us spend quality time with each other.”
Torres has always had big visions and is eager to learn new things, said Valentina Savelyeva, a friend who lived with Torres as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. Savelyeva said their friendship began during a spontaneous road trip together during college, where they bonded and shared stories of the countries they came from.
“(Torres) has created a beautiful life for herself and her son, especially given her situation,” Savelyeva said. “It’s really inspiring.”
Her upbringing and undergraduate studies concerning environmental injustice gave Torres the drive to work on improving water quality and access for people in disadvantaged communities in South Central Los Angeles.
Torres is one of very few environmental advocates with a focus on water who gives a voice to underserved L.A. communities, said Viviana Franco, the executive director of From Lot To Spot, a nonprofit organization that Torres hired as part of her work.
“(Torres) makes it very easy to work with her because she’s so open to ideas,” Franco said, adding that she admires Torres’ tenacity to be a voice for disadvantaged people.
Torres said she hopes other women will not let being a single mother or coming from a disadvantaged background like herself stop them from attending college.
She said she encourages women considering attending school to pursue education even if they are single mothers.
“I did it,” Torres said. “So anyone can.”