Month: August 2013

As I complete my internship at Massachusetts Interfaith Worker Justice, I find myself more aware of how I want to pursue social change. I always thought I would want to be a community organizer, and IWJ gave me a chance to experience labor organizing from a non-profit perspective.  Throughout the summer, I participated in meetings and actions on issues of economic justice. I helped plan and outreach actions for Not One More Deportation—a week of actions calling for an end to the deportation of undocumented immigrants; a highlight included a rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Burlington, VT where I heard passionate pleas from family members of immigrants currently under detention. I also participated in meetings and actions for Raise Up Massachusetts—a campaign to raise the minimum wage and establish an earned sick time standard for all workers in MA. I planned and participated in two rallies at Walmarts in Salem and Lynn. I also frequented pickets and rallies for various other issues, including Le Meridien workers fighting for a fair process to decide upon unionization.

At all of these actions, I was also a primary photographer; my photographs were used for social media and news articles.   I also redesigned the website for Mass. IWJ and helped set up a Facebook presence. In addition, I worked on setting up Labor in the Pulpit—a program Mass. IWJ does every fall where low-wage workers share their personal struggles with congregation. I had to outreach and set up dates for numerous congregations; we are planning to tie in Labor in the Pulpit with the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign as the program coincides with the petition collection period for the campaign.

Honestly, I found myself often frustrated at the internship for a variety of reasons. However, I am extremely grateful because it has focused my ideas of how I want to pursue social justice. I worked every day through frameworks of class and race—important frameworks that validate and resonate with marginalized communities and which are oftentimes lacking in some social movements such as environmentalism.  I am also grateful because I have realized I do not want to be a community organizer in a non-profit environment because it is often filled with bureaucratic work and their style of organizing oftentimes (but not always) is closed-doors in terms of decision-making. I missed the more grassroots, horizontal-style of organizing that I have previously done; I missed the love and community I felt working with friends. In the end, organizing requires love–love for the work and love in the community to sustain engagement because it is grueling and endless; I know now that I thrive in a team environment. In addition, I grew tired of the traditional form of organizing that primarily involved gathering numbers to participate in rallies, pickets, and marches. I want to explore other types of organizing that deal with participatory forms of art and reinventing public spaces as ways of engaging and empowering communities because traditional forms of protests have become somewhat “part of the social script”—that is, not deviating enough from the usual to inspire and move the jaded.

I was able to network and create relationships between my peers in the climate movement and organizers and activists I met in the labor movement. Many of them are interested in intersectional work and I hope to create more concrete collaboration between the two movements. This fall, I am studying abroad in Nepal. When I return to campus in the spring, I plan to get involved with the Brandeis Labor Coalition and see in what ways I can connect BLC with my current work under the Divestment Campaign. I will take my experiences and development of what I believe is a more nuanced understanding of creating social change to facilitate intersectional work; I am extremely excited in pursuing relationships and collaboration on-campus between activist groups, cultural groups, and art/performance groups and individuals to see in what ways we can come together to address social justice issues on-campus—I know there have been countless attempts in the past to unite activist groups but I hope I will be able to push the Brandeis community towards a more actively engaged role on-campus in putting social justice into action.

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

– Andrew Nguyen ’14

It is hard to believe that my summer at AVODAH has come to a close, but I know I have learned more than I ever expected. I definitely improved my organizational skills through being responsible for updating and maintaining national databases and listservs, and also through creating new resources for the upcoming year. I have become more technologically savvy and creative. AVODAH is an organization that strives to stay up to date with technology, and as I was responsible for creating resources like monthly e-newsletters and google sites, I learned a great deal about how to navigate these technologies.

I also completed a research project on National Boards to learn about successful tactics being used by peer organizations that could be beneficial to AVODAH. I interviewed representatives (including Executive Directors, Presidents and Board Members) from seven organizations and then, combined with my own research, collaborated with my supervisor to compile a project report for AVODAH’s Governance and Nominating Committee.  The project allowed me to practice and improve my communication skills, and gave me the opportunity to learn about other organizations and techniques. For example, the Executive Vice President of American Jewish World Service taught me a great deal about generative thinking, which is explained in this article.

During the rest of my time at Brandeis and beyond, I will continue to utilize and build upon the skills I learned at AVODAH. Directly after my internship was finished, I spent the week volunteering as a staff member at a teen leadership camp, and I found myself applying much of the knowledge I gained at AVODAH to my role at camp. Now that my internship is complete, I am motivated to continue taking on experiences that allow me to learn by doing. I would advise any student interested in an internship at AVODAH or in a similar field to do what was most beneficial for me: jump in with both feet, keep an open mind and seize every learning opportunity possible. Connecting with internship colleagues and supervisors is also one of the best actions to take.

This internship definitely reinforced my ideas about Social Justice. When I began my internship with the Director for Alumni and Community Engagement at AVODAH, the importance of keeping the Alumni Network thriving was not totally evident to me. Over the course of my internship, largely because of the many thought-provoking conversations I had with my supervisor, I came to realize why the Alumni Network is so important. AVODAH lives and breathes social justice. Their mission is to strengthen the Jewish’s community’s fight against domestic poverty, and to do this by “engaging participants in service and community building that inspire them to become lifelong leaders for social change.” In order to ensure that the latter part of the mission statement–inspiring participants to become lifelong leaders for social change–occurs, AVODAH needs to offer more than just a year-long program. This is why it is so important to facilitate the alumni community: to engage in a lifelong quest for social justice, alumni need assistance securing jobs in the social justice world, opportunities for networking within the social justice community and trainings that offer further skill-building opportunities. AVODAH’s mission could not be fulfilled with only the yearlong program. Working in the Alumni Department really showed me what a social-justice oriented organization looks like.

Overall, my AVODAH internship was a great experience! I am thankful for the intelligent and inspiring people I got to meet and work with, and look forward to using my new knowledge in the future. To learn more about AVODAH, check out their website and blog!

– Sophie Brickman ’16

My main goal for this summer was to gain some insight and basic understanding of the non-profit field. Fortunately I was assigned various tasks that allowed me to do so – even though the internship was originally for community organizing, I ended up doing lots of administrative tasks as well. My main accomplishment was working on a brand new website, which came a very long way from the original version. (!) Though this would be the perfect example of the kind of administrative work that all interns fear – since, to some, it’s not the most exciting stuff – the process included a lot of behind-the-scenes information which allowed me to explore how non-profits operate. For example, I was the liaison between my organization and the website company, communicating between the two different-minded groups of people. I updated the content for the website which included both formatting and researching the issues we stand for. I was also responsible for contacting and following-up with clergy to request quotes from them which then got included in the website. In addition, as we were trying to figure out how to manage donations through the website, I learned some new things about online-fundraising. If IWJ were a big, well-funded and established organization, the work I was doing might have  been delegated to the logistics, communications and development departments, respectively. However, since my organization had a one paid staff member, I, as the intern, had insight into all these different parts of running a non-profit.

Upon returning to Brandeis, I’m hoping to do a couple things to continue my professional development that started this summer. First of all, I’d like to organize and partake in a social justice or political campaign at Brandeis. Now that I have a clearer understanding of strategizing and organizing people, I think I could be a valuable member of a campaign-team. University campuses are actually the most fitting place to start social justice campaigns because students are still enthusiastic about social change (unfortunately real adults are often jaded…) so people are happy to get involved, and the size of most college campuses is small enough to raise awareness among the whole school. And if the school administration decides to change something due to a student-led campaign, other campuses as well as the media and local groups of people could notice. A small community brings change and then other communities follow- this is how change happens on a societal and ultimately global, level. In addition, I’d also like to find a semester-long internship for the spring to work in a more established non-profit.  I’ll have to do my research yet to find the perfect fit.

If someone would approach me and ask about my specific internship, the most important advice I would give them is to be very flexible (or, only take the internship if you’re flexible or want to learn how to adapt.) I would also tell them to push their supervisor even if she’s busy, because she has a lot to offer and to teach. In addition, I’d tell them to have as many one-on-ones as they can. Talking to clergy, workers, and people in the field is the best experience one could have.

In terms of the non-profit field, the advice I would give to someone is similar to the advice I got during my training: 1, You’re going to see things that make you want to cry and you will ask yourself if there’s even a purpose to all this social justice talk when the majority of the country clearly doesn’t care. Don’t give up. Carry one. Don’t let these moments ruin your experience, or your ideologies!
And 2, Remember, that every small, administrative thing you do, every cold-call you make, and every door you knock on, is ultimately furthering the greater cause you’re fighting for. Just because you’re not protesting in front of McDonalds or negotiating a worker’s contract with a CEO does not mean your work is not valuable.

With all the positive and hopeful advice that I described in the former paragraph, I will say that this summer gave me a reality-check, even though most of my ideologies and values have been there since long as I can remember. My values have been reinforced and even furthered throughout the summer. If I had any doubt before that injustice is structural, the remnants of those doubts are definitely gone now. But while most of the injustice that I saw growing up was on TV and in the newspaper, seeing it first-hand transformed my attitude towards social justice. It became much more of a lifestyle and outlook on life rather than a potential carrier. I recognized that I constantly have to be aware of what I buy, where I travel, what I eat, who I work for, because everything I do affects other people. In fact, meeting people who don’t work in non-profit and still do social justice related work proved to me that there’s many ways of being a social justice advocate. Some of the most efficient ways to change the world are to work as lawyer for a big firm and donate your free time to people who really need it, or to become a clergy member and convince your congregants to donate to causes that are important. I’m not what my path or place in this is yet. However I do know that this past summer I’ve developed a much deeper connection to social justice, and I’m eternally grateful to WOW for that.

– Viki Bedo ’15

I can’t believe how fast time has gone by since I first started my internship! It has been one of the most amazing and rewarding experiences interning at the National Consumers League (NCL) in Washington, D.C. I have gained so many memories with the fellow interns and the NCL staff, have grown so much as a consumer and consumer advocate, and have acquired more knowledge about important consumer issues than I had every imagined.

The specific tasks assigned to me allowed me to gain experience and knowledge in areas I was unfamiliar with. Extensive research opportunities on fraud and scams have allowed me to realize how essential non-profit organizations were in protecting consumers and informing them of issues that affect them. The research work I have done on various issues associated with public policy has been incredibly useful to me as a consumer as well. After researching and writing a blog about billing aggregators, who might place unauthorized charges on consumers’ phone bills on behalf of third-party companies, I always carefully review my phone bills and make sure there are no suspicious and unauthorized charges. I highly believe that every student should have the opportunity to intern at an organization like the NCL because the work that I have done has helped me to not only learn about billing aggregators, but also assist consumers to make good decisions and carefully review their phone bills.

Through national conferences, meetings, roundtable discussions, and Congressional hearings, non-profits are always actively working to protect consumers. By attending these events, I have gained new interests in particular consumer issues. By attending Women and Families on Attaining Perfection: What do women pay for the perfect body? hosted by the National Research Center for Women and Families, I learned that the yogurt company I have been purchasing from for years has been investigated and charged for deceptive marketing. I realized how serious this problem is and how many consumers, like me, have become victims of deceptive marketing or unproven claims. Even though I have completed my internship at the NCL, I hope to learn more about deceptive marketing in the future at Brandeis and other work opportunities.

I am most positive that the knowledge and experience I have gained at the NCL will be very useful when continuing my education and leadership commitments at Brandeis. Compiling data and researching different issues will allow me to gather information for research papers better. I have been trained to distinguish the most important details for a short term and long term research project. Furthermore, the networking and event planning experiences will allow me to act effectively as the middleman between academic departments and the students in the fall as the undergraduate departmental representative (UDR). Serving as the UDR will definitely take a lot of organization, concentration and teamwork to complete duties and responsibilities. The team projects I have completed at the NCL will help me to work together with other UDRs and assist each other to organize and coordinate great events and provide departmental information to students.

For any students interested in advocacy work, I would highly recommend interning at the NCL. The staff members are very caring and willing to help interns meet and go beyond their learning goals. They are very accommodating to what you would like to work on and are great about recommending various DC events that might be of interest to you. Although you have one head supervisor, you also have the opportunity to help other staff members at their events and conferences. I have noticed that individuals who work in a non-profit are very passionate about the work they do. They want to make a difference in the world. Every professional I have talked to at different events was willing to talk to me for probably hours about their work. You don’t necessarily have to be passionate about certain issues when finding an internship at a non-profit, but I am most confident that by the end of your internship, you will be passionate about at least one particular issue.

Through my internship with the NCL, my ideals of social justice have been reinforced. The strike for fair wages I mentioned in my earlier blog has definitely reminded me that fighting for social justice is fighting for human rights – the rights of low-wage workers and of those who need support. By writing articles for NCL’s fraud.org on obamacare and credit card fraud against charities, I realized how there are many miscarriages of justice. People sometimes take advantage of those who are less educated, less wealthy, and less supported. I’ve learned that to become a more effective problem solver and citizen, I need to act and make a difference. I need to inform those who are unaware of their rights, which is one of the prime reasons I am in plans of creating my own consumer rights blog. During my upcoming study abroad in The Hague in the spring, I also hope to learn how to legally protect consumers who have been scammed.

– Heather Yoon ’15

Time flew by, and now my internship at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination is coming to a close. At the beginning of the summer, one of my personal goals was to educate people about their civil rights so that they could be their own advocates. I soon realized, as cliché as it may sound, that I was the one learning from these presentations. Over the course of the summer, I gave presentations to hundreds of people, and these individual interactions—listening to people’s stories and feeling their gratitude—truly made me realize the difficulty but importance of this work.

One particular presentation stands out in my mind. At this presentation at a halfway house, I found it very hard to focus; the women had not been informed that I would be coming, the childcare volunteers cancelled last minute, and two of the women did not speak any English. I almost wanted to call it a day, seeing as I had to keep pausing and trying to engage the audience and ignore the distractions.  Then I noticed during one of the brief moments of calm two women suddenly paid close attention, one exclaiming that she never knew that she had these rights, while the other nodded vigorously in agreement. They then mentioned that they had to inform the other women who could not attend the presentation.
While I may not have discovered through this internship what it is exactly I want to do career-wise, moments like these offered clarity as to what sort of feelings I want to have and elicit at a job. I think that if I focus less on what field I want to go into, or what particular job I think I might like, and concentrate instead on what issues I am passionate about, and how I can have the most impact on an individual level, I will be better able to determine what I want to study, where I want to work, and what type of job I want to have.

Now that I have a taste of what civil rights advocacy on the enforcement side of the law is like, I am interested in experiencing what goes on in order to pass a policy or a law. Now I can better comprehend the necessity of education and advocacy even after a law or policy is passed, which will prepare me if I want to advocate for changes in policies.

For anybody interested in working at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, I would recommend doing as many presentations as you can with another intern—it is very useful to have another perspective, and you will be less nervous with somebody else there to help. After one summer working at a government law enforcement agency, I am hardly an expert, but if somebody is interested in this field, I think it is important to have as many personal interactions as possible to remind you why you are doing all of the other (perhaps less exciting) work.

In psychology, there is a term called co-morbidity—when two conditions occur simultaneously. That is, when you have one condition, it is likely that you have another particular one. In my short time at the MCAD, I learned something that perhaps I already knew, albeit subconsciously. The people who stood to benefit the most from the information I provided were the very ones who had many other pressing issues (e.g., poor health, poverty, domestic violence, etc.). At times, this was a bit discouraging, because I felt like the information I wanted to spread would not help somebody with his or her other issues.
I realized, sadly, that it is not possible to help every single person with every single issue, but if there were nobody doing this type of education and outreach, it would add to that list of struggles that people face daily. Simply letting people know that there are organizations and people out there to help them can be important, and educating one person can lead to a whole family, and eventually a whole community being educated. Achieving social justice in its many forms—equal opportunity being one of them—is not something that can occur overnight. While this is not a novel idea by any means, this internship brought it to the forefront of my mind, and has only made me determined to work harder in every capacity to try to achieve social justice.

It’s hard to believe this internship is coming to an end. I have learned so much since I started. I remember the first video we had to watch for orientation: Food Mythbusters’ “Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world?” At the time, I thought I knew much more than I actually did, and that I was better at community organizing than I actually was. I have become much more skilled in time management, especially when coordinating with many other people’s schedules. My Google calendar has been invaluable and I have definitely become addicted to mapping out my day. That is especially helpful for my time management of classes and professor’s office hours this upcoming semester.

Along with more effective time management skills, I have also learned to be a much more independent learner. I’m better at knowing when to ask questions, and when to use trial and error to figure out the best method.

I’m very excited to bring my new found organizing skills back to Brandeis with me. I feel so much more prepared to successfully lead Poverty Action Coalition throughout the next semester, which will be packed with activities and events. I’ll also be a Half the Sky ambassador at Brandeis, which will mean a lot more organization on my part. I can’t wait to use engage in conversations and activities revolving around issues I’m passionate about, especially now that I can speak knowledgeably on many more issues than I could before the summer started.

Now that I have completed my internship, I would love to get involved with different aspects of campaign organization. So much more goes into running campaigns than I realized. I would really like to work a bit with the communications department or development within an organization, to learn a bit more about a different kind of membership outreach. I would also like to recruit a much larger crowd to join Brandeis’ Poverty Action Coalition and network with other groups to help do that.

One of the most important aspects of community organizing is to always connect and ask questions when you’re speaking with people. This goes for everyone – people you spoke with two days ago, to family, friends, and especially those who you’ve never talked to before. Sometimes it feels very unnatural, but the trick is to remember that this is what you do everyday – you connect with your friends and family, and conversation peaks curiosity. Organizing works the same way, and sometimes it really helps to take a step back and remember the person you’re talking to is a unique individual, with unique things happening in his or her life, and in all likelihood would love to talk to you about them.

Additionally, in community organizing as with any field, connection is vital not only to organize, but to network! This is important not only for job-hunting, but also for getting ahead with whatever campaign or project you’re working on. You never know when someone may have a connection that can help you with what you’re working on, including the members who fund and support your organization – they are often times your most essential and most willing resources and volunteers.

Before I started this internship, I definitely put a lot more emphasis on individual actions when it came to social justice-related grassroots organizing. I now see that grassroots organizing is a lot more structural than I realized. When it comes to social justice actions, connecting with other people is key. When you are speaking to another individual who feels the same way that you do about a particular issue, it is important to connect on that issue, and to talk about its importance. This is why I’m so excited to lead a viewing of the new Food Mythbusters short video being released in September – I can’t wait to connect with others about their concerns with issues involving big agriculture.

After weeks of investigation, logistics and preparation of the methodological proposal for the study and having it approved, I finally got to the fieldwork stage – by far my favorite and what I’ve been looking forward to for so long! The goal of the study is to locate those communities that have lost their homes during hurricanes and tropical storms during the last 35 years, who have been relocated “temporarily” by the State into a refuge until their houses are rebuilt, and who have been completely neglected by the government, literally forgotten of, and still live as refugees after 5, 15 or 30 years of “waiting.”

Most of these communities are today poverty-stricken and socially marginalized: not only have they been betrayed by our government, but have also been particular targets of the injustices of a dysfunctional and corrupt political/capitalist system. Under what conditions do they live in? What have been their mechanisms of resilience? I selected 6 different communities across the country as the investigation’s study cases, each one of them affected by a different hurricane or storm.

Up until that moment, I had spent weeks engaged solely on academic research: investigating public policies, looking up precedents, focusing on civil rights and what kinds of violations the State was committing against this population. Certainly a very important task, but a potentially inconsequential one unless you can apply it for practical uses and ground it on everyday reality.  Visiting these communities reminded me what it is that I really like: working with people.

I had to organize and conduct focus groups within these communities as well as in depth interviews with community leaders. A beautiful and enriching experience indeed. But it did not come without its obstacles. I was taken back to my sociology and anthropology courses, and to my politics research methods class. As a researcher, you must necessarily take into account the effects that your presence can have within the population you’re investigating, right? I’ll explain.

My country is overwhelmingly mulato (the genetic mix between white European colonizers and African slaves that emerged as a result of the colonial period) and has a very small black and white minority. And though I had no say over the color of skin I was born with, it inevitably (and unfortunately) plays a role in determining the social relationships around me.

As an international student studying in the USA, I am a Latina woman – a person of “color” – and as such I am subject to the prejudices it entails, like being discriminated for supposedly being a “Mexican-speaking immigrant,” though I’ve never planned to live in the USA, I am not from Mexico but rather from the Dominican Republic, and speak a language that whose actual name is Spanish.

Interestingly, this exact same color of skin is subject to the opposite kind of discrimination in my country. In the DR, I am a blanquita, a “little white girl” and often called rubia, “blonde,” regardless of my dark brown hair: I am part of a racial minority that is subsequently assigned with a deep set of stigmas and automatic socioeconomic stereotypes. But in addition, I also happen to be a woman, and I happen to be young. What does all of it matter? One might ask. The answer is, A LOT. 

Even before I can say a word, my physical appearance has already spoken. The combination of these three characteristics (being white, woman and young) in a country that is culturally incredibly sexist, where racial prejudices are deeply rooted into the collective psyche and age hierarchy is very latent, proved to be a very interesting thing to deal with. As a social researcher, I was forced to be extremely self-aware of attributes outside of my control and try to counterbalance them in the best way I could. I would be frequently dismissed or distrusted – for being a young, white and female – until I could prove I didn’t necessarily fit into the common prejudices against these age, race and gender stereotypes. It was a challenge, but one that I am grateful for. Once the initial barrier was broken and they saw me for what I am beyond my physical attributes – simply another human being – the conversations and interactions were truly enriching.

In all, visiting these communities was extraordinary. Their faith, patience and overall resilience and determination to not give up in the face of adversity and injustice is simply admirable and inspiring. It is because of communities like them that keep demanding their rights that my country still has hope. And I believe they are not recognized for this as they deserve.

The massive worldwide industry of humanitarian NGO’s is more often than not afflicted with the “white-savior industrial complex,” as a 2012 article by Teju Cole so accurately describes it. As noble or well-intended their motivation might be, the world of humanitarian “aid” is focused exactly around that, aiding. Not empowerment or resilience building, but around the white-privileged rhetoric of “saving” and “helping” others, often invalidating or not even recognizing their political and social agency. NGO’s go into the field knowing what is “best” for the communities they are “helping” and telling them how they should go about living their own lives. Rarely these programs take a pause and simply listen. Truly listen. Ask what it is they want, what it is they believe they need and how they think they can achieve it.

And due to this paternalistic and immobilizing aid-culture, people are not used to being asked what they want either – many are shocked or skeptic, with all due reason. I’ve known since I was a little girl that I want to be a humanitarian worker. But one that hopefully contributes to shattering this paternalistic cycle and helps offer an alternative, more respectful and human way of doing it. 

Interning at The Osborne Association has been an amazing experience. I can’t believe that I’m now halfway done. Everyone has opened their offices to me and helped me out so much in my short time here, which has enabled me to learn much more than I ever thought I would. Before I started my internship my goal was just to understand the financial structure of a sec. 501.C.3 organization, but I soon realized that a non-profit organization is much more than the donations and grants it needs in order to run.

After attending the Social Impact Exchange’s Symposium on Scaling Social Impact, I realized that the quality of an organization is measured by their overall impact. While listening to the speakers at the Symposium, one of the main ideas that stuck with me is that an organization must stay true to its mission and follow through on the internal commitments they have made instead of trying to adapt to grants that are available or to try to appease foundations and donors by becoming other than what they intended. It is very easy to get sidetracked by other demands, temptations and opportunities available. I’m lucky to be interning at an organization that maintains a strong inner compass and  illustrates how to secure funding and create partnerships that stay true to its own mission.

By working in the Development Department in Osborne’s Bronx office, I have seen how Osborne has been able to maintain funding from the New York’s Department of Criminal Justice Services for successful programs such as the Green Career Center, which helps individuals who are formerly incarcerated receive the tools they to secure living wage jobs, and the Court Advocacy Services, which helps keep people from having to be incarcerated through appropriate and effective alternative rehabilitation and mental health programs. I also learned a lot about social impact bonds, which have allowed The Osborne Association to run vital programs on Riker’s Island in order to reduce recidivism by an estimated ten percent.

While working in Development has shown me the importance of finding the proper funding, my work in Osborne’s Brooklyn office has shown me the importance of developing the proper partnerships. I helped create the questionnaire and chose the different tele-visiting programs out of many across the nation that the National Institute of Corrections will interview in order to report on the use of tele-visiting for families and children to visit their incarcerated loved ones.

I have seen the incredible impact that The Osborne Association has had over its 80 year existence because of the programs  it has been able to run so successfully. I personally answered letters and phone calls from people who requested help on issues ranging from keeping people from ever going prison to helping people who have been incarcerated for decades get their life together and change for the better. I continue to learn about new programs, even outside of the New York area, that I can refer people to who call and write to Osborne for help. I hope to keep growing and learning all that I can about how to make and sustain the powerful impact an organization like Osborne has.

One of the largest problems that has plagued the United States for decades is the extraordinarily high rate of incarceration. The Osborne Association, an 80-year old criminal justice non-profit located in New York State, works to address this issue with an abundance of innovative programming that effectively reduces America’s reliance on incarceration and aids those formerly incarcerated to be productive citizens and family members. Although I have worked with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people since I was in elementary school, my internship at Osborne has exposed me to completely new ideas and approaches and has been very engaging. As a result of the discussions I had with my supervisors before my internship began, they have focused on ensuring that I would learn about how the organization is able to run smoothly and be so influential by working in Osborne’s Development and the Children and Youth Services departments.

Luckily for me, I was able to begin my internship with Osborne’s major fundraising event, which is called Lighting the Way. Lighting the Way displays Osborne’s incredible dedication and achievements with speeches and videos showing the power that people can have when they care about helping others and making their communities better places to live. In additional, about a week before Lighting the Way, I was surprised to find out that one of the members of The Osborne Association’s Board of Directors is related to a strong supporter of the WOW grants. This added to my feeling of connectedness to Osborne and their mission. Lighting the Way became the foundation of my internship because it showed the immeasurable impact that The Osborne Association’s innovative programs and crucial services have on New York and even across the United States.

For my internship I work in Osborne’s Bronx office on Mondays and Tuesdays and in their Brooklyn office on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In the Bronx office I have been focusing on development and fundraising. I am working closely with the Communications Director and the grants writing staff to better the website, attend critical meetings, and catalog the wide ranging publications that are vital for expanding various programs and services. So far, I have examined socialimpactexchange.org because The Osborne Association is one of the S&I 100.  I participated in a phone meeting about Sesame Street’s new initiative highlighting the issue of parental incarceration to discuss the initiative (http://sesamestreet.org/incarceration) and Liz Gaynes, Osborne’s Executive Director, being selected as one of only eleven White House Champions of Change for Children of Incarcerted Parents (http://www.whitehouse.gov/champions), and I went through the majority of the publications that have been in circulation for the past two years. I have been really lucky in my timing because these are all major developments that impact incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families and children across the nation.

In the Brooklyn office I have been focusing on training to answer Osborne’s Family Resource Center hotline and answer mail from incarcerated people across New York state.  I also conduct research for a training manual that Osborne has been contracted to prepare by the National Institute of Corrections for “televisiting”, a program that is sweeping the nation.  The phone calls and mail have made me very sympathetic to the pain that families, especially children, go through because of the stigma and shame that is associated with incarcerated family members. This has pushed me to do what I can in order to ensure that the growth of televisiting will not be used to replace in person visits to jails and prisons but rather as a helpful supplement to keep those incarcerated connected to their loved ones. People are not aware of the devastating trend in jails across the America to get rid of visitation and only allow virtual visits, which will only lead to more issues for families impacted by incarceration and especially for their children. There are over 2.1 million people behind bars in the United States and 1 in every 28 children has a parent behind bars. This number is much higher for African American and Latino children. It is necessary to provide these children and their families with the tools they need to lead healthy and productive lives, including access to their parents who they love.

This has been a whirlwind of a summer, and I can’t believe it’s come to an end.  Working at PCDC has challenged me to think about my life, my goals, and social justice in new ways, some of which has been useful and some of which has been frustrating for me.  The useful aspects have been gaining a broader understanding of what early intervention is and what services are available to the disadvantaged population I’m hoping to working with in the future.  I also have spoken with many people at the agency about what graduate degrees I should earn in order to get where I want to be in my career; something I had been struggling with greatly before this summer.  It has additionally been useful to have been researching the federal regulations relating to early childhood education and care and investigating how PCDC has complied with these regulations as I now have a better sense of why daycares do things certain ways.  Lastly, I’ve gotten a lot of experience working in PROMIS, the database that is used in many similar agencies.

There have also been some very frustrating challenges, such as trying to understand my contributions to social justice.  I had always felt that I needed to be working directly with children in order to make a difference, but working with my supervisor and talking to the director of the program has convinced me otherwise.  While I still aim to work directly with children as that’s what I find most fulfilling, I am working through whether I should focus more on policy since I could make more of a widespread difference that way.

I think these conflicting ideas will challenge me throughout my life, and I can’t imagine a better place to grapple with the issues surrounding social justice than Brandeis.  When I get back in the fall I will certainly be seeking out opportunities to contend with the conflicting concept of how best to apply myself to bettering children’s lives.   I would like to continue my research in relation to the available services and find or create a niche that is both enjoyable and fulfilling for me.

I am not sure how to advise other students interested in this field, as I am still grappling with a lot of it myself.  I suggest that you really deeply investigate what it is you are looking for and pursue a job that fulfills your requirements while at the same time understanding that it will more likely than not take several steps to get there.  I myself had thought I wanted something specific and, while I was on the right track, have certainly changed my mind and clarified many things.  If you are pursuing an internship or job specifically at Community Action, I suggest that you contact my supervisor directly, and you are welcome to email me to get her specific information.

It has been a summer full of highs and lows, but overall I am very glad I had the opportunity to work in this agency and would do it again if I had the chance.  I am eternally grateful for the respect and trust bestowed upon me, as it gave me a really gracious entrance into the professional office world.

Avital Sokolow Silverman ’14

It has already been seven weeks since I first began my internship with the National Consumers League (NCL). It amazes me how much I have grown as a consumer and consumer advocate during this short period of time. During my first week, I was excited, nervous, and intrigued simply by meeting professionals who have made differences by advocating for consumers in major issues throughout the nation. I was proud to be working for the League in which Eleanor Roosevelt had been Vice President and for the organization that protected women’s rights in the famous Muller v. Oregon case. Now, I am also impressed by the extensive research and advocacy work I have taken part in throughout my internship. Every research project assigned to me has been a new and exciting learning experience. The research has not only allowed me to educate the average consumer about issues but also educate myself. I have definitely become a much more informed consumer, who is able to advise other consumers on issues including radio fraud, airline fee gouging, youth magazine traveling sales, billing aggregators, prepaid card use, and credit card fraud against charities. The NCL has given me the great opportunity to contribute to the fight against these practices that hurt consumers directly and indirectly.

Since my first week at the NCL, I have achieved my initial learning goals to learn how a non-profit functions and how NCL protects consumers’ rights. I have also learned how to execute an effective and meaningful research project. My research project on radio fraud has significantly allowed me to understand how to analyze an issue and carefully make conclusions. The radio fraud research project was intended to analyze whether certain radio advertisements were misleading, potentially misleading, or legitimate. While listening to the radio advertisements, it was important for me to carefully note what the companies were exactly advertising and what services they were clearly offering. Afterwards, I went on their official websites and compared the programs they offered online with what they were saying on the radio advertisements. I also read through the numerous pages of complaints reported to the Better Business Bureau and reviews that evaluated consumers’ experiences with the company. Although some radio advertisements may seem legitimate to the average consumer, some of them may be misleading. An advertisement that offers a free cruise may claim to be selective and completely free of any charges, but some consumers have reported that they were billed for extra programs they never signed up for or authorized. Consumers also had to pay additional hidden fees on board and attend long presentations, all of which were not explained in the advertisement. After carefully investigating into several radio advertisements, I wrote detailed reports that included my evaluation of the advertisement supported by consumer complaints. I expect that the reports will be useful during roundtable discussions and advocacy work related to radio fraud in the near future. After researching about radio fraud, I have become very cautious about misleading radio advertisements and compelled to warn consumers about potential scams. 

One of the most memorable experiences I have had so far at NCL is striking against wage theft and companies’ use of pre-paid cards as the default payment method at the Ronald Reagan Building. Fellow interns and I supported low wage workers as they voiced their anger against prepaid cards that are associated with high fees for ATM withdrawals, PIN transactions, balance confirmations, customer service, and inactivity.  Before participating in the strike, I had done initial research about prepaid cards. Directly hearing workers’ calls for fair wages and respect was an incredible and influential encounter. I witnessed low-wage workers explaining that pre-paid cards only drive them further into poverty. In the second strike, one woman explained how she was illegally paid less than the minimum wage and had to pay additional pre-paid card fees, but was expected to support herself and her children. While I realized that I must learn how to further advocate for their rights, I also felt proud of my work at the moment. The employees that I shared brief conversations with showed their appreciation for our support with warm smiles. Following the strikes, we released a press release praising New York’s Attorney General for launching an investigation into retail practices. We hope other states will follow and protect the rights of low-wage workers.

The unique experiences at NCL, such as meeting the former Surgeon General at the NCL’s Script Your Future Campaign event, combined with the short-term and long-term research work will help me to effectively advocate for consumers’ rights on campus. By utilizing the step-by-step process of organizing and promoting events and campaigns, I hope to organize campus events that will be engaging, inspiring, and informative. I will use the knowledge I have acquired at the NCL through research and first-hand experiences to effectively communicate with students, professors, and outside resources as I serve as the Undergraduate Departmental Representative for Politics, Legal Studies, and East Asian Studies this Fall semester. Before I head back to school, I look forward to learning and impacting more throughout the last few weeks with the NCL team.