Author: alexandramundis

As I reflect on my summer experience at Oxfam America, I’ve realized how much I’ve learned about the realities of social justice work, in terms of what promoting justice truly looks like in the real world. Social justice work is incremental, and oftentimes feels invisible or impossible. However, I’ve witnessed how the combination of seemingly small actions and collaboration between changemakers can create larger actions and long-lasting structural change. Instead of being disillusioned by the reality of social justice work, I am empowered to be part of the process. Before my internship started, I never thought it would be possible for individuals to leverage the power of corporations, but now I can confidently say that changemakers at Oxfam do so every day.

Throughout my internship, I collaborated and led various projects that supported my department’s overall mission of creating equitable food value chains for the largest food and beverage stakeholders. My biggest contribution was documenting supplier disclosure practices through researching and compiling resources, which I used to create a database to keep track of the supplier transparency efforts of these companies, traders, and supermarkets.

There were definitely moments along the way that felt tedious or like I was searching for dead ends. However, once I completed the project, I was so proud of myself and the research I had conducted. This project will be valuable for the members of my team who can now access this information in a consolidated and organized document. Since my team members work directly with companies, this information will serve as a knowledge base to guide action and directly influence the companies to improve human rights, environmental practices, and promote justice in all its forms.

After completing this internship process, I would recommend that others spend the summer interning at an organization like Oxfam America. I’ve learned how important it is to stay open-minded and say yes to every project, especially those that I knew little about beforehand. I’ve learned the importance of asking for help, and advocating for myself as needed. Over the course of my internship, I asked so many questions.

I would also recommend connecting with people outside of your department. After my supervisor asked me if there were any projects that I wanted to learn more about, I advocated that I wanted to learn more about health equity efforts at Oxfam, and had the opportunity to speak with Oxfam staff working on the COVID-19 People’s Vaccine. This campaign is working on improving vaccine access around the world by making the vaccine free, fair, and accessible (learn more and sign the People’s Vaccine petition here). It was so valuable to meet with people outside of my team and department, both for networking opportunities and to learn more about the topics that I’m passionate about!

I wouldn’t change anything about this internship experience. Through my internship with Oxfam America, I learned so much about how to promote gender justice, climate justice, human rights, and labor rights in the value chain. I also learned more about myself through this internship and the kind of work and setting that I want to be in once I graduate. I hope to stay connected to Oxfam America and am confident that this internship will help steer me towards future opportunities that promote social justice.

As a Sociology and Health: Science, Society, and Policy double major, I’ve taken a plethora of Brandeis classes that have shown me how systemic injustice is. Although injustice manifests in every street corner and neighborhood of our country, every person is impacted differently as a result of how they are situated within intersecting contexts of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. I’ve found myself drawn to the concept of the social determinants of health and the importance of understanding how one’s identity and where they live can greatly impact their health and life chances.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear how social, racial, political, and economic forces are shaping our health outcomes. At the start of the pandemic, some referred to it as the “Great Equalizer” because they believed that everyone was equally susceptible to the virus. However, this reality could not be further from the truth. We have seen that Black and Brown people have died at much higher rates than White people due to where they work, underlying health conditions, and race-based disparities that limit access to health care and other resources. We are all in the same storm, but we are definitely not in the same boat.

Understanding the root causes of systemic forms of oppression is essential in order to bring about social justice for all. As I’ve been at Brandeis, I’ve noticed my classes becoming more focused on intersectionality across issues, rather than taking a single-issue approach. In my “Sociology of Empowerment” course, we read an article that has stayed with me beyond the duration of the course. The article, “If We Don’t Solve Racial Injustice, We’ll Never Solve the Climate Crisis,” draws parallels between racial and climate injustice to say that they are rooted in the same systemic oppression. As a result, communities of color often face the disproportionate impact of climate change, and therefore face unequal health outcomes as a result. One powerful quote from the article reads: “…being dominated and exploited to serve a wealthy white few is something Black people share with the planet.” Climate justice is racial justice. This article makes it clear that we can’t bring about climate justice without bringing about racial justice, and realizing the links between the two. Social justice movements are often viewed in silos, which is holding us back from achieving an intersectional form of justice.

From my time at Oxfam America so far, it has become increasingly clear how an organization can fight oppression through an approach that focuses on interlocking forms of oppression. Oxfam addresses the injustice of poverty by working on land rights, women’s rights, climate change, and human rights. There is collaboration between these teams, and they work to address the root causes of poverty simultaneously. For instance, the gender team in my department does research on how women laborers are being impacted by climate change and land grabs by corporations. Without linking these issues, there is so much that gets left out of the story.

While taking on various projects, I try to stay grounded in an approach that draws parallels between issues. Oxfam’s work is intersectional and truly speaks to how we can’t achieve justice by solely focusing on one form of oppression at a time. Since oppression is systemic and intersectional, the best way to promote social justice is to fight for systemic and intersectional solutions in a way that advocates for those who are most marginalized.

This summer, I’m interning for Oxfam America in the Private Sector Department and Food Systems Department. Oxfam is a global organization that works in over 90 countries to end the injustice of poverty. To address the root causes of poverty, they focus on issues of food, water, and land access, human rights, gender justice, climate justice, and labor inequalities through technical support to partners, advocacy work, and humanitarian relief. Their slogan, “The power of people against poverty,” shows how united the organization stands in their mission to fight the intersecting issues of poverty.

I was inspired to join Oxfam because they fight for so many causes that I’m passionate about, specifically gender justice and food system reform. The work that Oxfam does is rooted in the idea that the many forms of justice are intertwined, and we can’t address poverty without also simultaneously looking at different forms of injustice. I admire Oxfam’s ability to fight poverty through programs that provide immediate support, such as hunger alleviation and emergency humanitarian efforts, while also promoting structural changes that address the root causes of poverty.

The work that I’m doing for Oxfam this summer is on food value chains, which includes the stakeholders involved in the production, processing, and manufacturing stages in the supply chain. This work highlights inequalities–e.g., the domination of agricultural conglomerates that limit the power of small farmers, the emission rates of corporations, the marginalization of rural women workers–that occur within some of the largest food and beverage corporations. Food companies have a lot of power in controlling our food choices, making it crucial to examine their global impact and the inequalities built into their structure.

Oxfam has a campaign called “Behind the Brands” that assesses the impact of some of the world’s largest food and beverage companies (the “big ten”) through a scorecard evaluation project which is available to consumers on this page. This campaign aims to investigate the practices of global corporations, while educating consumers about the practices of food companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Kellogg’s that we support every day. The Behind the Brands campaign’s framework has the following dimensions: fair economies, equal human rights, climate justice, and gender justice. As part of Behind the Brands 2030, Oxfam seeks to amplify the voices of the people in their value chain, address inequality, and harness the power of the private sector.

As part of the Behind the Brands team, I’m working on multiple projects and leading one to research and document the disclosure efforts of the Behind the Brand companies and traders. Supplier disclosure is one way that food and beverage companies can be transparent with their sourcing efforts. I am working on a spreadsheet that tracks sourcing details about each company, with information on the agricultural commodities they use (like palm oil and sugar), where they source the commodity from, any supplier lists they have published, the date of disclosure, and commitments they have made to increase transparency and sustainability efforts. The work that I’m doing is contributing to their growing research that will support future initiatives in the countries that they work with. Once they have a research knowledge base on where companies source their commodities, they can perform their outreach work to the companies to advocate for them to take measures that will promote equitable food value chains through sustainability, gender, human rights, and other commitments.

This project is showing me how much power is concentrated in companies, and the potential that organizations like Oxfam have to fix structural issues within companies to bring about justice for marginalized workers, the land, the economy, and the future.