World Vision is a not for profit non-governmental organization. It has headquarters in 100 countries. Its main aim is poverty alleviation regardless of race, gender, religion, or ethnicity. It is a humanitarian organization that is focused mainly on children, but believes that children cannot fully develop if their surroundings are not conducive for them to reach their full potential. Communities are helped to deal with poverty and injustice, through tools such as agricultural training and education. They provide emergency assistance to people affected by natural disasters and civil conflict, and develop models for long-term solutions to poverty.

I am interning with World Vision Brazil at their headquarters in the capital city of the state of Pernambuco, Recife. After the organization was mentioned at a social justice conference I had attended in March, World Vision was one of the organizations I contacted to see if they would have me assist them over the summer. World Vision operates a sponsorship program that connects people to disadvantaged children around the world for support especially during their developmental stages and runs projects developing communities around the world. As seen in recent publications on the news surrounding the World Cup, inequalities in standard of living is no stranger to the nation of Brazil. Here in Brazil a number of World Vision´s projects are run in the favelas (poorer districts of many large cities).

My internship this summer focuses on the internal operations of the organization in the Pessoas & Cultura (People and Culture) department which deals with employees in the organization. During my first week I received a comprehensive guide book outlining the organization´s objectives and code of conduct, which I was to read and understand.

As well as everyday office work, I was handed my first project to assist in the planning of an organization event. As a mission based organization, my goal in this is to plan an event rooted in organizational values that will engage employees and their families. Planning this has given me great access to the city, in researching what would appeal to Brazilian employees. It has also provided me with drive to understand what justice is for children in order to make the event both enjoyable and educational. I have found that the city is very rich in history and cultural activity. The month of June has been set out as a month of celebrating saints, such as Sao Joao (St. John), where there are special meals, costumes and dances. Before I had arrived, I was notified that in honor of the World Cup this year, World Vision International had organized a mini World Cup football tournament, where children were the players and employees served as volunteers to run the tournament, it was a big success here in Brazil.

 

World Vision Cup Brazil´s Poster

 

It is engaging and educational operating professionally in Portuguese 8 hours of a day. Portuguese was a conversational language for me, but now my vocabulary and fluency is expanding daily. For the rest of the summer, I have been assigned more projects to develop, one which will deal with orientating incoming employees. I hope to visit a project, in order to get an experience of the organization´s field work. Being a part of the department, even for the short time so far has shown me its importance, for it was responsible for successfully creating an organizational culture that is both comfortable and conducive for work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s only week one, but I can already tell that my summer internship at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is going to be a whirlwind of a learning experience! Since the DPH is such a vast organization, I suppose I should clarify where exactly I’ll be situated… and how I got here. This summer, I have the exciting opportunity to intern with the DPH’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Survivor Services Unit, or “SAPSS,” as it’s colloquially called around the office. The SAPSS Unit is dedicated to changing social norms that foster sexual violence, encouraging a state-wide climate in which sexual assault is not tolerated, as well as promoting and enhancing effective and accessible services for all survivors of sexual assault. This means allocating funds to rape crisis centers and other organizations, advocating for sexual assault prevention policies and programs, and providing information about sexual assault and various other resources to agencies and individuals throughout Massachusetts. I secured my internship by getting in touch with Marci Diamond, the Director of the unit (and a Brandeis alum!), and talking with her about how my passion for social justice and sexual violence prevention work might be an asset to the department. An internship with SAPSS seemed like the perfect professional growth opportunity, and so far it’s living up to expectations: I have already met so many interesting and important people to learn from.

As an intern for this incredible group of dedicated professionals, I’m set to take on quite a few tasks throughout the summer. I’m responsible for staffing a group called the Higher Education Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Working Group, which is comprised of leaders from many Massachusetts colleges and universities that work to collaborate on sexual assault prevention. This committee plans university-based informational summits (such as one which was held at Brandeis last fall!), and has regular conference calls to discuss their various ongoing projects.

I’ll also be using surveys to collect, and later analyze, data on Massachusetts rape crisis centers and the ways they are preventing sexual violence. This data will serve as an inventory of the prevention work and capacity-building that rape crisis centers, or “RCCs,” are doing throughout the year. My eventual analysis of the data I collect over the next few weeks will help to inform federal reports regarding the prevention of rape and sexual assault in our state and hopefully help to improve prevention outcomes. All of these projects, and the people I’ll get to work with, will teach me valuable lessons necessary for a career in sexual violence prevention. I’m especially excited to learn more about the field’s data collection and analysis methods, with which I’ll be working closely; proficiency with these programs (like Excel, Qualtrix and even Surveymonkey) are important skills for any future profession I might choose.

One of my favorite things I’ve noticed throughout the past week is how closely SAPSS works with other relevant units. SAPSS is part of the Division of Violence & Injury Prevention, which also includes other units such as Suicide Prevention, Injury Prevention, and Youth Violence Prevention. All these teams collaborate and communicate with one another on ways to achieve their common goal of making Massachusetts safer overall. This incredible teamwork makes for a great work and learning environment; I’m enthusiastic about spending my summer not only with SAPSS, but as a part of this remarkable DPH community.

A few rows in front of me, Ralph Nader is giving an introductory speech with a crowd of roughly 100 people watching. Sitting on either side of him are leaders of various advocacy groups such as Public Citizen and EPIC. Thus began my first day of work at the National Consumers League in Washington, DC. I had barely arrived at the League office before I was sent out by my supervisor to attend Nader’s event called Unstoppable Right/Left Convergence. This event brought together both left and right-wing advocacy groups to find common ground on many pressing social issues such as the defense budget, child exploitation through commercialization, and the minimum wage in the United States.

I am a Public Policy intern for the National Consumers League, which is a non-profit consumer advocacy group that was first founded in 1899. I discovered the National Consumers League internship position through the Hiatt Career Center’s World of Work program in late November of 2013. I subsequently began applying for the position through BHired and secured the internship in early April of 2014. As the Brandeis Fellow of the NCL, I am responsible for assisting both the Vice President and the Executive Director of the League with a variety of projects throughout my internship. At the present moment, the League is preparing for a Congressional hearing regarding the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2014 that was introduced by Minnesota’s junior senator Al Franken in late March of this year.

My first week working at the League was extremely hectic but also quite exciting. I learned a great deal about various topics such as international trade law through the lectures that were given by the representatives of the consumer advocacy and public interest groups at the Nader event. Assisting my supervisor with preparations for a Congressional hearing has allowed me to focus in-depth on one particular piece of legislation (in this case the Location Privacy Protection Act introduced by Senator Franken) and dissect the nuances of the bill. Through this research, I have become much more aware of the way mobile phone companies and data brokers manage and store consumers’ personal information.  I have become acquainted with a number of my fellow colleagues during the first week of my work and look forward to getting acquainted with my fellow interns once they arrive beginning next week. The League staff are all very cordial and are an absolute pleasure to work with. They certainly do care a great deal about the interns, frequently asking me if I needed anything.

Looking forward, I hope to gain more knowledge with regard to the implementation of public policy and to analyze in-depth the effects and implications of those policies for the general consumer population. Through the various projects and research that I will be conducting and assisting with, I expect that my writing skills will drastically improve and my research skills will be greatly sharpened. Perhaps most importantly, I believe that I will gain a new perspective with regard to the field of consumer advocacy and public policy as I progress in my work. My first week is rapidly coming to a close amidst a flurry of activity that began with the Ralph Nader conference and is ending with making preparations for the Congressional hearing next week. If the initial days are any indication of what is to come, I simply cannot wait to see what the coming weeks at the League have in store.

– Aaron Dai ’16

My first few days at my internship has given me a window into the way the legal system can be used to further social justice issues.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU), founded in 1920, is a nationwide, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with more than 500,000 members dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality embodied in the U.S. Constitution.  Through its affiliates, members, and national staff, the ACLU has a presence in every state across the country.  Each affiliate works with its state’s legislature and policymakers to further the protection and advancement of civil liberties. This summer I am working in the Advocacy and Policy side of the organization, located in their national office in New York City. The Advocacy and Policy staff partner with ACLU affiliates and National Chapters throughout the country to protect civil liberties by developing effective advocacy strategies at the state level. The Advocacy and Policy team is part of an interdisciplinary team that develops state-based legislative and public policy campaigns in ACLU priority issue areas.

As an intern in the Advocacy and Policy department, I will be supervised by an advocacy and policy counsel and will be part of a multi-issue team. My particular focus will be mass incarceration, under the ACLU Smart and Fair Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, which seeks to dramatically reduce incarceration and criminalization, particularly of communities of color, over the next 10 years. My supervisor is an expert in policy reform and specifically in criminal justice reform. Over the course of the summer, I will research and write on a number of matters relating to state-based advocacy to achieve the goals of the campaign. Over the first few days I have begun to look at the economic effect prisons have on rural communities—an interesting area that is not often fully explored in conversations about mass incarceration.

The work I’m doing is highly pragmatic and dynamic. In order to achieve its goal of significantly reducing mass incarceration in the next 10 years, the ACLU is weighing a variety of strategies, ranging from which states and polices should be targeted to which messaging strategies are the most effective.
My first few days, I have learned so much about the ways in which social justice can be achieved through strategic action, may it be through policy, litigation or a combination of the two.

I started my internship at SJ Vietnam last week and have been very excited for my work there this summer. The first few days were filled with getting to know my workplace and the people I work with. I was impressed by the huge number of volunteers and part-time staff at SJ Vietnam and their commitment to the organization’s work. Besides volunteers and part-time partners, there are 9 full-time staff at the office, and they are extremely helpful and make me feel like part of a family. My supervisor walked me over the organization’s work and ongoing projects on the first day. During the next two days I had a chance to sit in the office’s midweek meeting and listened to our fundraising challenges. Then I started working on my first assigned project and my supervisor has been very helpful and supportive so far.

SJ Vietnam started in 2004 aiming to connect international and Vietnamese volunteers to work with the most in-need communities in northern Vietnam. Throughout 10 years of endless work, the organization has brought more than 5000 volunteers worldwide and across the country to help children from low-income families access better education and proper health treatment. With its mission “Volunteering for sharing, learning and being responsible”, SJ Vietnam currently has 9 full-time staff in Hanoi office and 10 part-time program managers directing the organization’s work including programs in the National Pediatric Hospital, Fisher Village, and Youth House School to name a few.

During my 10 week- internship, I will work as an Impact Valuation Intern conducting research on the effectiveness of the organization’s ten ongoing projects using SJ Vietnam’s and the local authorities’ statistical data on the children and communities we serve. At the end of the internship, I will present a thorough analysis on the organization’s performance and implement recommended strategies to help improve the programs’ impact. I will also conduct weekly site visits to meet with volunteers and communities to gain a better understanding of the landscape of the nonprofit market in Vietnam and deepen my background in development work.

I knew for sure that I wanted to come back to Vietnam this summer to learn more about development. I started looking for NGOs and nonprofits and came up with a list of two hundred organizations doing development and humanitarian work. Narrowing my search to those focusing on either microfinance or education in the northern area, I finalized my list to twenty and started contacting their human resources departments. Among the 4 organizations I interviewed with, SJ Vietnam was seeking an intern who could conduct quantitative research on impact evaluation, a field that I had some experience in from my last internship. I chose SJ Vietnam because of their significant impact and my very helpful supervisor.

My goals for the summer are to apply my knowledge from my classes at Brandeis into real life work, improve my software skills such as STATA, Excel, PowerPoint, to learn more about non-profits and NGOs sector and the landscape of development work in Vietnam. Last but not least, I wish to give back to my home country and spend time with children to observe the different living and social conditions between Vietnamese and American children. Overall, I believe I will complete my tasks this summer and hope that I will leave giving a little help to SJ Vietnam.

– Trang Luu ’15

Last week, I started interning in the New York office of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). AJWS is a non-profit organization that, drawing on the Jewish commitment to justice, works to realize human rights and end poverty in the developing world. One of the many things AJWS does is train key opinion leaders in the American Jewish community to advocate in support of U.S. policies that will improve the lives of people in the developing world. I was placed as an intern in the Experiential Education department, which, among other things, devises the curricula through which these leaders are trained. Right now, the team is most focused on a current fellowship of Rabbis which will be going on a ten-day trip to Kenya in August. In Kenya, the Rabbis will learn first-hand from grassroots activists in the area who are working to combat injustices against women, children, and the LGBT community. The trip is just a part of the program though – these Rabbis have spent six months with AJWS learning about advocacy and the issues Kenya faces. They will spend six more months continuing the learning process when they return, after which these Jewish leaders will be well-prepared to lead their communities to advocate for human rights.

I have several responsibilities as an intern, which include collecting art and poetry from Kenya to include in the curriculum; collating and organizing survey data; supporting recruitment for future programs; assisting in preparation of pre-departure emails and orientation calls; and assisting where necessary. AJWS has a meeting-heavy culture, so I have also been attending several meetings a day.

I found this internship through Brandeis’ B.Hired website. After sending in an application, I was interviewed twice and was then offered the internship. I was very excited, as I had previously been exposed to the work AJWS does, and I wanted to be a part of this movement for real change. Since starting my internship, I know I made the right choice. Everyone here has been remarkably friendly and welcoming. My general impression is that this is an open and comfortable environment filled with people who genuinely care about making a difference. In just one week, I have already learned so much about human rights issues around the world and best practices for dealing with these issues. I have been exposed to a new way of talking and thinking about such matters.

This summer, I expect to learn a great deal. I think I will develop the skills to better advocate for human rights and an end to poverty in the developing world. I also think I will learn how to thrive in an office environment, and how to network. I also hope to learn more about myself. As a rising senior, I expect that this internship will help me make decisions about my future after Brandeis.

– Jessi Puterman ’15

Asalaam Aleekum! Nangeen def, ça va? As I write this, the sounds of the city of Dakar, Senegal drift in through the office window: construction from the housing development across the street, taxis passing through the neighborhood, and some of my co-workers conversing in Wolof infused with French. I have been living in Dakar for the past four months while studying French language and African development as well as attempting to learn the dominant Wolof language and the art of Senegalese cuisine.

Dakar has truly been an experience. The capital city of Senegal, it sits on a peninsula on the westernmost point of Africa jutting into the Atlantic. Because of its location in the Sahel region, sand is an omnipresent obstacle here, whether you are walking through it on sidewalks, emptying it from your clothes, or attempting to protect your shoes from the inevitable wear that constant exposure brings about. Gross poverty mixes with excess of wealth on the city streets and people of every nationality and social strata cross paths to work, study, or travel through the region. Experiencing Dakar has complicated my knowledge of West African environmental politics, cross-cultural identity, and, especially, the international aid industry.

The organization I am interning with this summer is Global Research and Advocacy Group (GRAG), a non-profit that works with marginalized communities in Senegal and the greater African continent. I’ve been interested in international development work for a while and knew that this summer would be a great opportunity to experience the industry first-hand. I began my internship search by asking my study abroad program directors and classmates who were interning through the program about their organizations to decide if there were any which aligned with my academic and career interests. I contacted a few companies, sent my resume, and spoke with supervisors about intern responsibilities and planned summer projects. After meeting with the director of GRAG to discuss their goals, I felt that they were the best fit for me. We discussed my qualifications and they offered me an internship position.

GRAG is a relatively new organization – created just two years ago – and the team is somewhat small, with a staff of about 20 and a few occasional consultants. The size gives the office a more comfortable feel and the attitudes of the team especially contribute to that. Everyone has time to drop into the office I share with another intern for a quick chat that may or may not turn into a Wolof lesson, and I talk to every person here at least once a day because greeting is so important to Senegalese culture. There was an upcoming deadline for a project during the first few days that had everyone harried and feeling rushed, but even that did not stop the flow of conversation and jokes that carries the work along.

GRAG is currently in the midst of a campaign for the abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting(FGM/C) on the African continent and most of the energy here goes into that initiative. The team is based in a Francophone West-African country but works as part of an international consortium for many projects, so a large part of my job so far has involved French-to-English translation work and general editing. I actually jumped straight into the project even before my first day: my supervisor sent me part of the proposal to translate a few days beforehand and I decided to get a head start. That decision turned out to be the right one because the amount of documents to translate and research projects to complete sent the entire team into a whirl of activity during my first week. My first days here have been a crash-course in formal document translation and crafting international funding proposals, two fields that I am very interested in.

Though we finished the major points during the first three days, everyone is still tying loose ends and adding new ideas to enhance the proposal before the final review in a few weeks.  We are still working towards the final deadline, but if the consortium is accepted, the initiative against FGM/C will be implemented for a preliminary five years before possible extension for five more.

The prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation, or Female Genital Cutting, ranges by ethnic group and region, and is not as much of an issue in Senegal as in other African and Middle-Eastern nations, not to mention the recent increase in Western countries. But the practice has gained the notice of big international organizations like the UN and Tostan that link the larger themes of female empowerment and public health development to the issue. Problems abound in these initiatives, including those of criminalization of ethnic group practices, the battle between tradition and certain kinds of modernity, and a complicated (and oftentimes paternalistic) history between African groups and international aid programs. The consortium proposal attempts to validate these concerns while keeping in mind the risks that the practice poses to young women and their communities.

The FGM initiative is just one being launched by GRAG this summer and I am excited to help with this and others, such as the opening of a learning center for vulnerable populations here in Dakar. In this predominantly Muslim country, that includes sexual minorities like homosexual men and women, but also sex workers and others who do not follow accepted standards of living. In the next two months I hope to learn more about the daily processes of advocacy work and international development, and what projects are being done to help marginalized people in the region achieve their full human rights.

Ba beneen yoon, or until next time!

Second only to New York, Massachusetts was one of the first states to create an organization entirely devoted to fighting discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation. Located next to the Massachusetts state house, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, or MCAD, utilizes multiple departments to both educate the public of their civil rights and investigate complaints for probable cause of discrimination. Anyone can come to MCAD and discuss discrimination they feel they are receiving, and MCAD will file formal complaints for any person who wishes to. After the complaint has been filed, investigators move forward by receiving statements from the respondents (persons accused of discrimination), then rebuttals from the complainant (person filing the complaint). MCAD uses the standard of probable cause to determine if the case should move forward. This means that if the investigator finds probable cause that discrimination occurred/is occurring, they move forward with the case.

I found an internship position at the MCAD through the Brandeis B-hired website. After applying to several positions, I was called back to interview for two positions; outreach and housing/testing. After interviewing, Eric Bove, the director of housing and testing, emailed me asked if I wanted an internship. After receiving details about the organization and the work I would likely be doing, I accepted the position.

As mentioned, this summer I am working on the Housing and Testing department of MCAD. The department is responsible for investigating complaints regarding housing discrimination. In addition, the department runs tests in all areas to find out if discrimination is occurring. For example, if the MCAD receives multiple complaints about housing discrimination from a certain realty office or landlord, the department would create a test and send out trained testers to find out if discrimination is taking place. This may be in the form of sending one white person and one person of another ethnicity (based on the ethnicity of the people alleging discriminatory practices) with similar credentials to see if the second person is treated differently.

My first week at MCAD mostly consisted of intense training. The new summer interns received training for four (4) days in Massachusetts state law and MCAD practices. We learned that most of the complaints filed at MCAD fall under Massachusetts law 151B Section 4, which lists protected categories that are unlawful to discriminate against. While I will learn more about my exact responsibilities next week, as of now, I am to do at least one day of complaint intake. This involves meeting with people who come to the office to allege discrimination. My job is to help them draft and file a complaint. Additionally, a lot of the work I will be doing involves reading through case files and contacting either the complainant or the respondent to continue the investigation process.

One of my goals for this summer is to fully familiarize myself with Massachusetts discrimination law as well as how the MCAD process impacts individuals who have faced discrimination. That said, the first week has already shown me that while there are myriad people willing to fight for the rights of others, most cases take an extremely long time and those who are discriminated against still suffer, even if they recover damages in the end.

Additionally, I have found through training that while many people are covered under the protected categories in 151B Section 4, there are still groups of people that I believe should also be protected but are not. One obvious group is social class (upper class, middle class, lower class, etc). While Massachusetts housing law makes Section 8 (people receiving money from the government) a protected class, people can still be lawfully discriminated against for their class in all other types of law such as employment.

Finally, we had an interesting discussion in training about an idea going around in Massachusetts about making physical appearance a protected category. The way many people see it, there is no doubt that people are treated differently based on their physical appearance. The question of how to define this concept in legal terms remains unanswered. Thus, my hope for the summer is to learn how certain protected categories came into being and how new ones can be defined and added to state (and federal) law.

Malaria is a disease of poverty that affects approximately 207 million people around the world and results in 627,000 deaths per year.  Malaria is transmitted by an infected female Anopheles mosquito (only female mosquitoes bite humans!) that transmits the Plasmodium sporozoite to humans through its salivary glands. The parasite then begins to replicate in the liver and travels into the blood stream where it eventually bursts.  The fever and chills that are chronicled in malaria cases result from this burst.  The malaria life cycle depends on this transmission between mosquito and human to survive. Therefore, to prevent and eradicate malaria this cycle must be broken.

This summer I am working with Medical Care Development International (MCDI) at their Malabo, Equatorial Guinea site.  MCDI is a sector of MCD, an NGO located in Maine that focuses on enhancing the well-being of peoples and communities in developing nations in the areas of health and socio-economic development.  MCDI accomplishes this mission by empowering people with the knowledge and behavior necessary to improve health care in quality and quantity so that it is affordable to the neediest people in the world.  In Malabo, MCDI has two ongoing Malaria control projects.  The Bioko Island Malaria Control Project (BIMCP) concentrates on reducing, monitoring and exploring malaria cases that occur on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea. While the Equatorial Guinea Malaria Vaccine Initiative (EGMVI) is working on implementing one of the first malaria vaccine clinical trials in the world, with the use of Sanaria’s PfSPZ vaccine.

Although during my internship I will be working closer with the latter project, within the last week I have spent time with both projects to familiarize myself with MCDI’s overall mission here on Bioko Island.

During my first week with MCDI, I have worked with different departments and have taken on a variety of tasks.  I recently completed a Good Clinical Practice course, so that I have more background knowledge on EGMVI’s clinical trial process.  I have also contributed in conference calls and worked with a Data Program.  I also spent a day with the Entomology lab where I learned about malaria transmission, the life cycle of the mosquito, how to identify different genera of mosquitoes and helped contribute to a toxicity experiment where two chemicals used to repel mosquitoes were tested for their effectiveness.  Most recently I helped input survey data brought back from MCDI’s spraying team.

In the fall of last year my family moved to Malabo.  Although I had looked into a variety of internships that were located in the U.S. for this summer I decided to switch my search to possible internship opportunities in my new home.  I was informed of MCDI, their mission and their malaria control projects on the Island through a community connection. I was very interested in MCDI’s mission and took this as an opportunity to explore possible career options in the combination of public health, research and the medical sector.

Within the last week, I have bounced a bit between the two malaria control projects.  However, I am so grateful for the experience and knowledge that I have gained.  Without this foundation of knowledge about basics of malaria and malaria control I would be completely lost during the remainder of my internship! All of the staff members at MCDI have taken time to explain the building blocks of MCDI’s mission in EG and have taken care of me in every way.  I am really excited to learn more and make deeper relationships in the next 7 weeks.

In the remainder of my internship I hope to improve and become more confident in my Spanish (which is slowly but surely coming back to me!) as well as explore career paths.  The amazing things the selfless people at MCDI do to give back to their surrounding community has really impacted me and has made me think about even more ways I can use my future to help others.  I hope that, through the knowledge that I continue to gain about malaria, the causes, effects, prevention and possible eradication methods will help me refine my career goals.

– Jesse Knowles ’15