Author: sarthij

This summer has been extremely rewarding and I feel as though I have gotten a valuable look into the financial side of running NGOs as well as a better understanding of what my life would look like if I decided to pursue a career working for NGOs. While I am grateful for this opportunity and enjoyed my internship, I discovered that I prefer the policy side of NGOs rather than the administrative side. I like doing research and I like having hands-on experience with the work organizations are based around. 

I have realized that social justice work is hard, and trying, especially within a state like Georgia. Additionally, I have realized that social justice work in the South is necessary and that I would love to base my career within this region. While the purple politics of Georgia yields interesting discourse, I want to dedicate my life to shifting that scale further into blue, without changing the socioeconomic demographics of the state too greatly. I don’t want Georgia to become the Massachusetts of the South, praised a liberal haven, but with mass gentrification and wage inequality. I would love to get involved with labor organizing here and will likely spend my post-college life doing research into NGOs that deal with this cause.

During my internship at New American Pathways, I have worked largely on organizing donors, asking local businesses to donate, and helping to write grants for the organization. Most of my work has been focused on the upcoming fundraising gala: Red, White, and NEW, which hopes to raise $250K in revenue to go towards New American Pathway’s many programs and initiatives supporting refugees. So far, we have at least 50 donations and at least 30 sponsors lined up for the event. I will help make sure the event runs smoothly and will enjoy seeing the results of my hard work.  

If I was to give advice to someone working with a refugee organization, I would say that you need to be empathetic above all else and that you should only pursue this field if you are willing to put a lot of work into it. Otherwise, you will not be successful instituting change. If someone was going into the financial side of an NGO, my advice to them would be to make sure they are truly interested in finance, grants, and talking to donors. I wish I had known I was not going to be pursuing as much policy work, which in hindsight I wish I asked about during the interview process. It was beneficial to experience the administrative and finance side of an NGO. In the future, I look forward to expanding my focus on policy change and research.

This summer I am beginning to recognize how my experiences in community causes at Brandeis helped shape the goals I created for my internship, and how my internship and club activities are both playing a critical role in helping me form new goals for graduate school and my career.

At Brandeis, I have focused my time outside the classroom on being involved in community causes. During my first week at Brandeis, I joined several clubs, including the Right to Immigration and the Brandeis Labor Coalition. The Right to Immigration is both a club and a nonprofit organization that exposes undergraduate students to the immigration field and assists those who are seeking asylum or refugee status in the United States by providing them with pro-bono help in completing applications and preparing for immigration interviews. The Brandeis Labor Coalition is a student group that uses our status as “paying customers” at Brandeis to leverage our interest in the school’s contracts with the worker unions on campus. For example, the graduate students were able to reevaluate their contract with our support.

My involvement in clubs on campus helped me realize that active participation in social movements can really make a difference, regardless of one’s level of expertise in a particular area. Additionally, as I hope to one day go to law school, these clubs have exposed me to interesting areas of law I might pursue in the future. The first is immigration law, specifically helping people who are applying for asylum or refugee status in the United States. The second is labor law, with a focus on helping to represent individuals who would like to discuss better labor contracts with their employers or unions who seek support and guidance in suing their employer.

Learning about these two branches of law has been monumentally helpful to me in pursuing a career path. Additionally, my newfound experience in these two fields has allowed me to feel more comfortable doing my own research into these topics and develop well-informed opinions on the issues at hand, namely labor practices in America and America’s immigration policy.

This summer, I decided to further explore America’s immigration system by working for New American Pathways. This NGO provides employment, employment resources, housing, education, child care, and women’s empowerment programs to immigrants who recently have been settled into the greater Atlanta area after gaining asylum or refugee status. This is, essentially, an organization that works with refugees after they have successfully navigated the process of migrating into the country, independently or through an organization like the Right to Immigration. 

My job at New American Pathways is not policy-heavy; rather, it is administrative, which exposes me to a broader scope of work. I am largely in charge of fundraising, which means I must convince donors about the importance of their contributions to our work.

My club and community service experiences at Brandeis have proven to be invaluable for my internship. For example, I already know how important it is to streamline the process of settling into the United States for new immigrants. Further, my experience working directly with refugees allows me to represent their voices and stories to donors. Now, when I am instructed to help organize and dictate the “stories” of the immigrants at New American Pathways, I believe I can do so with more understanding and tact than I could have before being this deep in immigration-oriented work. 

I hope that the experiences I have taken with me from Brandeis will continue to allow my work to be fruitful and efficacious as I move towards the date of the gala.

I work at New American Pathways, which is an organization dedicated to serving refugees settling into the metro Atlanta area, specifically in Dekalb County. New American Pathways provides more than 5,000 refugees per year with the necessary tools to rebuild their lives and achieve long-term success. I chose this particular field for an internship because of my own personal and professional experiences. I come from a family of immigrants and also intern at Brandeis University’s The Right to Immigration Institute (TRII) where I work on policy and assist clients with the application process behind gaining asylum or refugee status.

At New American Pathways, I am less involved with the policy, but still hold an important position in the area of refugee and asylum work. I wanted this experience because it gives me a more diverse portfolio of skills and knowledge at nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as well as within the field of refugee and asylum work. I believe that refugee and asylum seekers’ safety and well-being is critical and should be prioritized in the United States, especially since our military and policies are often responsible for refugee crises.

New American Pathways helps people who have gained asylum or refugee status find affordable housing, jobs, and offers literacy training, job training, and resources for women and children in dire situations. New American Pathways offers distinct programs that all aim to help Georgia thrive while helping refugees merge into the general Georgian populace without assimilating away from their roots. There is a large emphasis on community pride at New American Pathways and the organization employs many people who are refugees and/or who come from similar backgrounds.

I largely work within the finance and administrative aspects of the organization. I am currently planning a gala and helping to find people to fund the important work the organization is doing. The gala is called the Red, White, and NEW Gala. It will take place at the Georgia Aquarium on August 17th.  This essentially entails pouring over spreadsheets, running errands, and contacting people who might donate an item or service for the silent auction, or who might sponsor a specific need for the organization directly.

My work helps fund the organization, as they need resources for many different branches to ensure they provide the best services possible to Georgia’s refugee population – including legal services, family care, therapy, and women’s outreach for their clients. Unfortunately, in a state like Georgia, refugees are a particularly vulnerable population, due to both a lack of financial security and xenophobia. 

I hope to continue my work with this organization for this summer and to develop professional connections I can maintain throughout my entire career.