Month: August 2018

What have you learned about social justice work?

It’s sometimes hard to completely explain what one’s gotten out of an experience; however, with this internship, it’s different. The students call me 선생님 (sungsaengnim, teacher), but I’m the one who’s learning. My time with the children at Samsungwon will end after breakfast, but I’ll always remember their faces, their kindness, their humility, and their love for one another. Explaining all I learned about social justice work would take me well over the five hundred word limit, so for now, I’ll say that social justice work is HARD, but one hundred percent worth any troubles. Our work helps others – what more could we ever ask for?

Impact on internship organization?

My direct supervisor has repeatedly emphasized that without my presence, running Dream Camp would be impossible. The three board members (our president, chief administrator, and a general member) visiting Korea had other business matters to attend to besides the Dream Camp. That left me to create the foundation for the budget, camp schedule and details. Of course, everything went through my supervisors, but I was tasked with all the research. It was a lot of work, but so rewarding. As I write this, the camp starts tomorrow (August 6 in Korea) and I’m so excited to see everything we’ve planned for the past two months come to fruition.

What do you wish you’d have known?

Thanks to having experience running other events, there weren’t too many things that shocked me. Planning multiple-day events takes a lot of kindness, patience, and flexibility. To anyone who is planning a camp for the first time, the suggestion I’d stress the most is to go into it with an open mind and an open heart. You’ll meet people who have very different ways of thinking and planning and sometimes, their way is better than yours; other times, the reverse is true.

Advice to others?

Little things make big connections. I’ve learned a lot from interacting with our different board members. Our president, Aimee, has most of our connections in Korea, and she made them by choosing to explore the world beyond the one created by her Fulbright program. Our chief ambassador, Grace, has the gift of being able to strike up conversation with anyone around her. In America, every taxi ride we took, she handed out a business card. in Korea, she always managed to bring up the work and why she does it while riding from place to place.

I’ve had the opportunity of meeting several representatives from our partner organizations. I’ve also met a few former KKOOM volunteers. Listening to their stories and learning from what they share provides invaluable new perspectives.

With any organization or field, especially if one enters without prior experience (or even with experience), it’s crucial to listen more than talk.

Volunteering or working abroad is not an easy task. You find yourself stepping out of your comfort zone, traveling miles before reaching your workplace, communicating with people who do not understand your language and all of that might seem very hard.

The two months I spent in the Ivory Coast have been the best two months I have spent working at an internship. My two months were full of experiences and a dream come true. I found myself being challenged emotionally and physically everyday.  Due to certain conditions, I was forced to think fast because mistakes cost too much. I found myself challenging some of the people in the hospital to treat people/patients in more humane ways no matter what their social status was.

There were many times when everything seemed difficult to manage; like waking up early enough to reach work before 8:30am when commuting is about an hour and thirty minutes.  Or the many times when I left the hospital feeling like I had not done enough for a patient. However, this journey was the most rewarding experience. One of the many important things I have learned this summer is that “an act of kindness does not need to be big , the smallest acts count a lot.”

During my stay, I met a woman at the hospital who needed care for her newborn son . Her little daughter was there, too. I greeted them and told her daughter I liked her braids.  A couple weeks later, I was heading home when I saw the same lady with her kids on my street. It turned out that we live in the same area. Her daughter, Atta, approached me days later and said she wanted to wear my white coat when she grew up. At that moment, my goal here in the Ivory Coast was met. That’s all that mattered to me, “inspire and be inspired.” I was inspired by many doctors, but mostly inspired by female doctors. These woman fight stereotypes and sexism everyday in the workplace and outside of work. As a woman, I have also experienced many sexist comments. The popular belief is that women do not belong in a hospital, or if they do, they should be seeking positions like nurses and other  administrative jobs. There are not many female doctors in hospitals and during my two-month stay, I met only 3 in both hospitals I worked in. So seeing a little girl look up to me reminded me the many reasons why I decided to take part in this internship, and I could not be more grateful.

As my journey continues, working in an environment where social justice work is needed, I have learned important things about social justice work:

1. Everyone can help someone: No matter what you do in life, there is enough room for your contribution .
2. It is important to practice self care because we can’t help or make change if we do not take the proper time to care for ourselves.
3. Treat people how you would like to be treated. It’s important to learn how to respect boundaries and communicate in building effective and long lasting relationships
4. Practice self-reflection and understand the complexities of relationships.
5. Allow yourself to be vulnerable: it is important to be vulnerable in order to understand, promote and accept change. Putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and in situations that are not very comfortable expand your experience. But most importantly speaking up when we see injustice is the most effective way to educate people on social justice and raise awareness.
6. Active listening is key to building trust.

To anyone who wants to volunteer abroad, go for it. Be yourself and dive into it.  Walk with confidence, however, be very humble. Be ready to learn from anyone, even the little children. Be as curious as a kid, ask questions, and always be prepared to run in case of an emergency. Be open minded and no matter what your background is, you are learning from these people so be humble and you will have the best time of your life. I hope to reflect and use my skills at Brandeis University and the outside world. I am looking forward to the fall semester, where I will have the opportunity to share my skills with my friends. I am confident that I have grown and I hope to offer my strength  as I continue in my journey of learning, inspiring and being inspired.

– Awa Soumahoro

This past Friday, I completed my final day as an intern at the Hartford Public Defender’s office. While I am excited to enjoy the rest of my summer and prepare for my semester abroad to Peru over the next month, I am a little sad to be leaving behind an office that I have grown to love.

Through my time here, I have learned a great amount about the criminal justice/legal system in our country and the great inequities that continue to exist within it. As far as social justice work goes, I have learned that it takes a lot of patience and willingness to make sacrifices. It can be hard at times when I consider the future career paths I would like to take, but also the reality that those paths typically involve being paid a great amount less. While there are many lawyers that work in the private sector making at least 3x the amount as the public defenders in my office, the lawyers I work with choose to do the work they do because of their passion for the job. Additionally, I have learned that it requires you to learn and work with people who often come from different backgrounds from your own.

Something that I wish I had known when I started working at this internship last year, now having worked there for two consecutive summers, is the amount of emotional labor that goes into the job. Everyday I would hear stories from our clients and the people I met in lockup, telling me about their circumstances and how they ended up in their situation. I can be a very emotional person so it was hard at times to hear these very painful stories, or hear about the very little means many of the families in Hartford live off of. It was also hard at times as I learned some of the people I would talk to would often lie to myself and other interns if they thought it would help them have a better outcome in court. This was hard because while I have a great desire to help others, not knowing whether some people were being truthful or not made the job incredibly difficult at times.

If I were to give advice to someone else who wanted to start interning at the Hartford Public Defender’s office or at another public service law firm, I would tell them to come in with an open mind and ears. Most of our clients struggle just want to be heard as they often feel they have little voice when it comes to their case. By giving our clients an opportunity to talk to myself and the other interns at court, I hope it allowed some to feel they were listened to and valued.

For people accused of criminal charges, it may feel like they have no one to support them and that they are looked upon as less than because of something they may have allegedly done. For many of the reasons I have discussed over the course of this summer, I believe the work done at the public defender’s office is some of the most important work done in the legal field. While I am sad to be leaving this office and its amazing staff behind, I look forward to visiting everyone in the future and continuing to do social justice work throughout my career.

Thanks for a great summer!

– Olivia Kalsner Kershen ‘19

Naming every skill I’ve gained in the past eight weeks would not fit in this blog post, and the skills I’m aware of make up probably only half of the total skills I’ve attained.

That being said, my skill that I can confidently say has improved the most throughout the summer is communication/public speaking, both in-person and in writing. This is a skill that fascinates me; it is a skill that is extremely important to have, especially in today’s world with technology and social media when you must stand out from everyone hiding behind a keyboard. You can read for hours, but you can’t master this skill by reading. You can practice time and time again. You can know everything about a problem, and you can know a solution, but if you lack conversational skills, you lack the skills to succeed in many ways.

I’ve met hundreds of strangers in the past two or three months, and the impression that I make on these strangers will either lead to success or to resistance. I’ve learned how to converse with all different kinds of people about the same thing, and in so many ways. In just the category of business owners, I’ve communicated with people from all education levels in regards to electric buses. I’ve also been reaching out to students, chairs of neighborhood associations, TriMet professionals, and other environmental groups. I’ve spoken in a number of meetings and in front of small and large crowds.

I’ve learned a crucial point to effectively converse with others is to listen to them. I’ve been in many meetings where I just listen. I’ve attended TriMet meetings, Oregon legislative committee meetings, and I’ve listened to people who have questions or concerns. I’ve learned that each interaction is unique, and the way for someone to understand you is for you to make an effort to listen and understand them.

As a result of this internship, I now feel confident speaking in front of people and approaching strangers and starting conversations. Having strong conversational skills is important for just about everything. For any path, creating and maintaining good relationships is a fundamental skill for success. Developing listening skills is important for school, for jobs, and it is a skill that many people lack (especially in today’s world). Today, it seems like everyone argues but no one listens.

I’m eager to have more life experiences to enhance my communication skills, and I strongly believe that this skill will only grow if you are thrown into uncomfortable situations, like I have been this summer. Staying in one place or engaging with a just a select group of people will limit your ability to grow socially, and I’m inspired to go out of my comfort zone to talk with people who have varying sorts of stories and perspectives.

Interning at The Center Houston during this summer has helped me achieve academic and career goals. Marketing has always been something I had an interest in, along with not-for-profit work. The Center gave me the opportunity to combine two of my passions and become more knowledgeable.

The Center is constantly fighting for social justice. I have come to learn that social justice is something that should be present in every field. However, the reality is that sometimes things are not as we imagine. The Center brings equality and opportunity to grow for adults with disabilities. Coming to work has never been so fulfilling as it has this summer, because I understood the true meaning of social justice and how it plays out in our society. I have learned that The Center fosters social justice by bringing people together! Social justice can be done in multiple steps and the most valuable one is helping someone gain a skill to break away from the injustice.

During my internship, I was assigned multiple projects. However, my favorite project was contributing the idea of hiring a job coach. I believe that teaching skills to clients to obtain jobs is as important as teaching a client the process of a job interview. This idea was something that I contributed to by making a presentation and being part of hiring someone, which was exciting.

The whole idea behind obtaining a job coach is to teach clients how to dress and answer questions during a job interview. We also keep in touch with clients because we want to make sure that they not only get a job, but also maintain it. It’s very fulfilling when a client obtains a job because of all the hard work he or she put into it.

Before starting my internship, I never worked on writing a press release that was going to be read by 11,000+ people. I wish I had known how to write one; however, at the same time it was a good learning experience to grow and learn from the professionals around me. Organizing volunteer events is something I wish I had known before, because of the details and time each one takes. During my internship, I had the opportunity to meet several volunteers whose stories were amazing and who were passionate in giving back to The Center.

Interning at The Center was a very rewarding experience for me. The level of professionalism you are exposed to makes you adapt to a fast pace of work, while recognizing the things you need to work more on. The support system from the departments was something I loved, as well as how my supervisor was always teaching me something new. The staff is welcoming and you are free to work on any project that will help you achieve your academic or career goals.

A career in marketing can be very competitive, but working for a not-for-profit organization with experienced professionals in that field can be rewarding when starting. The network that you are exposed to is large, which means you can reach out to potential mentors who are eager to help you succeed.

This opportunity would not have been possible without the WOW Social Justice fellowship and for that I am very thankful!

Lesbia ‘20

For the past week, I have been working at a public hospital in Abidjan called the CHU. It’s a bigger public hospital that has all services. This time I am working in the neurosurgery department, a career I want to specialize in after medical school.

The CHU has its problems and is not perfect. The CHU is bigger and has more space for its patients, but it lacks resources. People with financial burdens usually go there because they can’t afford hospitals like the military hospital, which is a semi-private hospital. Being exposed to and having to adjust to many of the issues that different hospitals face, I have learned important skills. One that I think was very important is interacting with patients, especially in an area where the population is not very well-educated. At first, I saw that doctors tried explaining things to patients but being so overworked and busy, they explained little. Patients were sometimes left confused about their conditions. Before I went home after work, I would go back to the patients to explain medical information that was given to them in clear ways that they were able to understand. Some patients were not very fluent in French. I used my language skills and translated in Madigo for those patients (thanks to my parents for teaching me their language).

As a person who is committed to social justice, I also found myself advocating for some patients who needed immediate attention. I loved listening to the patients and empathizing both intellectually and emotionally with them. It made it easier for me to understand their problems and propose solutions while staying professional. Sometimes, I would received text messages from my colleagues on my days off telling me that some patients asked after me and were looking forward to our “end of the day” conversations.

I hope to take the skills I have learned to Brandeis University and advocate for the lives of the underserved and the marginalized. My goals are to receive an education, become a doctor and use my professional platform, or even as an undergraduate student, to be a catalyst in the fight for human rights. I can start this by first going around the world to provide quality healthcare to the underserved.

I am definitely for the idea of making the world a better place. I have access to quality health care any time I want, so I believe these people deserve to have the same opportunity I have. This is very important to me, especially because I lost my aunt at a very young age for the same financial reasons that some of the people on the Ivory Coast are facing. She could have been saved if someone helped her or at least advocated for her life.

I hope to become a person who is grateful enough to give back to the community. I will take my public advocacy skills to Brandeis University which will allow me to fight for human rights, especially for the marginalized groups around the world.  I refuse to feel guilty every time I see someone in need of treatment. I want to sustain a responsible and fair society, and the most powerful way to do so is to study the wonders and miracles of science in my pursuit of a medical career.

– Awa Soumahoro

At the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club I have been gaining much insight as to how non-profit activist groups organize themselves and create real change.  I came in expecting lots of protest organizing and direct, politically charged outreach. While this is a large portion of what members of the Sierra Club take part in, it does not cover what happens behind the scenes in the office. At my work site there are lots of educated, driven, determined, compassionate people all striving towards a common goal: protect the earth and protect the people.  First and foremost each of them has taught me how to take my frustration on a social justice issue and use that to fuel each step we take in reaching towards a better future.

On a more technical note, I gained much valuable knowledge on what needs to happen in the office in order for it to function smoothly and efficiently. These include, but aren’t limited to, skills in Excel Spreadsheets, data analysis, professional communication, organization, and time management.  Sometimes it felt like I would be working on the same spreadsheet for days at a time, and to what end? I admittedly got frustrated because at times it felt like all the hours spent in the office didn’t amount to any actual progress on the important issues. I eventually realized my place in it all, however, would not be solving every hard case of bureaucratic gridlock that plagues this country.

Climate change is not going to be reversed any time soon or by any one individual. This took some grappling with in order to come to terms with, but when I finally did I understood that I had so much to gain by simply doing the seemingly mundane paper pushing tasks. All of them make my bosses’ jobs easier, and on top of that the skills I gained will be relevant in almost any future job setting. Some of the more important takeaways included learning about equity and inclusivity challenges as well as being conscious that no organization is perfect, even social justice oriented non-profits.

Ever since I arrived at Brandeis I have been wanting to get more involved with all the social justice activism present on campus, and I think now that I am more familiar with a wider range of what that justice means I can do so with more confidence and capability. Specifically, when I get back on campus this Fall I plan on getting involved with S.E.A. (Students for Environmental Action). As far as personal revelations, this summer I’ve learned that a desk job isn’t my strong suit, though someone has to do it. Furthermore, I’ve learned that I’m passionate about protecting the environment, and I never want to forget to take the time out of my schedule and fight to protect our planet.  While this doesn’t align perfectly with my neuroscience major, I’ve realized that it doesn’t have to. These issues at hand are more important than ever and need everyone’s attention.

In my last post I expressed some of my angst regarding the nature of social justice work in an office setting, but this made me realize the necessity of every small cog and gear in a system. Similarly, with social justice one must advocate not just for their own liberation and welfare but for everyone around them who may not even have the privilege or opportunity to make their voice heard. Every voice matters, so use yours and use it effectively.  With each story of a marginalized experience that you can bring to light, your cause becomes stronger in solidarity and authenticity. There is power in numbers, and the trick is to make sure those numbers, even if large, are representative of the relevant and diverse struggles that require constant awareness and action to address.

At the Sierra Club I have learned much about grassroots efforts specificaly.  They are so powerful because of the amount of voices (the Lone Star Chapter alone has 22,000 members). Similarly, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has increased awareness of systemic racism in the United States as it gained momentum with more and more stories being shared, especially through social media.  #BlackLivesMatter is very distinct from the Sierra Club, however, in that it has no hierarchal structure for organization, purely the voices that choose to use the hashtag.  Such a decentralized movement thus loses the weight of beurocracy and becomes much more focused in its goals. As an intern at my site, I felt like a very small gear in the system, but by now I have learned that the small gears don’t just help the system function, they are necessary for it to function whether there is a central organization scheme or not. My desk work, while semi-mundane depending on the day, made my superiors’ jobs easier as they had less of the number crunching and media reading on their plates. Furthermore, I believe it was a valuable opportunity for my coworkers, because through teaching me the basic ins and outs of the organization and the daily work they do, they got to practice communicating these issues in layman’s terms.  In the office, I provided an increase in demographic diversity as the youngest person (and especially one not thoroughly educated in environmental issues). This lead to many insightful discussions relating the Sierra Club’s work to social justice as a whole, and I genuinely believe was a learning experience for all parties involved.

If I could go back in time, I wish I had come into the internship with more knowledge of the business and legislation side of environmental justice.  All of the policy and lawsuit side of things blindsided me, and when I first got on site I had a lot of research to do on the current political climate in Texas surrounding environmental issues. To anyone considering an internship with the Sierra Club or other environmental justice organizations I would advise to be aware going into it that you are going to take many losses.  It can be a discouraging field at times, but you’ve got to keep your head up, continue to fight the good fight, and believe in every part of what you are doing.