Haneen Mohamed

Our415 Communications Specialist | Communications Team

Haneen Mohamed is a digital artist, music archivist, and community worker. Before joining DCYF, Haneen worked as a transportation urban planner in City Heights, San Diego where she did capacity building work with local residents historically excluded from the city-planning process. There she facilitated advocacy efforts for bus lines, parks, anti-displacement strategies, and regional environmental justice movements. She received her BA in Urban Planning & Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego, where she also worked as a community educator and co-led student access and retention initiatives on campus.

While Haneen has grown up across continents and considers herself a 'citizen of the world,' her family immigrated from Sudan to the East Bay in the late 90's, where she spent all her summers growing up watching Arabic-dubbed soap operas with her aunties and accompanying them to Ross & Burlington Coat Factory. She is proudly Sudanese, and everything she does is rooted in reverence for the collectivist, interdependent and generous spirit of the close-knit Sudanese immigrant communities that raised her. When not working she is making art, collecting vintage cassettes for the Sudan Tapes Archive, or clocking into her second full-time job as a Beyonce stan.

What inspires you to do this work?

I think that youth are one of the few groups of people who have the imaginative and creative capacity to build a better world. As the eldest of three, I find that there is always much to learn from their wonder and whimsy. Youth are the pulse of a community, they are the trend-setters, the culture-makers, and the movement-builders.  In my family's native Sudan, youth were at the forefront of a movement that toppled a 30 year military dictatorship. Youth carry with them the unwavering belief of new possibilities and new ways of being, even as they navigate an increasingly stratified and inequitable world. Investing in youth is investing into a livable, dignified, and joyous future for all of us.

DCYF’s tagline is “Making San Francisco a Great Place to Grow Up.” Do you believe this? Tell us why.

San Francisco is home to a beautiful confluence of cultures, countercultures, art, food, music and so much more. Those who grow up here get to experience a rich, eclectic and truly distinctive city. However, the cost-of-living crises pushing out native San Franciscans, especially youth, really pose a threat to the social, political and cultural fabric of the City. Addressing the economic disparities and structural inequities afflicting young San Franciscans is vital to making sure the youth of today can enjoy the magnetic and exciting San Francisco older generations got to grow up in and enjoy.

Is there a song or anthem that inspires your grind and motivates you to serve our communities?

“Feel It Boy” by Beenie Man featuring Janet Jackson.