Category: Recipient of Social Justice WOW

The summer sped by so quickly, one moment i was feeling overdressed at my first day in at UFE and the next, I was eating ice cream with my supervisor and the other development interns after our final presentations. This may be a little cliche, but the phrase “time sure flies when you’re having fun” has never applied to any situation more.

I had a wonderful time working with United for a Fair Economy. My summer project definitely played an integral part in helping me achieve my learning and skills acquisition goals. I was successful in taking information that I had found during my research of development on social media and converted it into an actionable strategy for the organisation. I convinced my supervisor and a conference-room full of people that the best way to use social media is to build a community and engage the members of this community so that they are inspired to support the organisation. This applied to quality of social media content as well as the tools that available that UFE chose to use for fundraising.

The slideshow for my presentation is available at this link. Please take a look!

http://prezi.com/9jgb-eawqbko/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Soon after, I received an email from one of the members of UFE sharing how my project and ideas had influence him to take a more critical look at the type of content on UFE’s facebook page. I am happy to say I influenced the Facebook post below and it fills me with joy that I was able to give to UFE in my own small way:

Visit the UFE Facebook page for more: https://www.facebook.com/faireconomy

I came out of this internship knowing that any career path I chose to pursue in future would have to enable me to positively impact the world around me and allow me to lend my voice to social debate. I have often battled to the reality of “changing the world” when so many people fear the futility of social justice. I am more inspired than before to pursue a career in Economic Development, Socio-Economic Policy formation and the continued fight to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the world’s wealth.

I only have one piece of advice for anyone looking to enter this field, or any other for that matter: Don’t be afraid to learn new things, and be willing to give your all to a task. You will be surprised by the things you will discover about the job and about yourself. Development, though it differs from industry, is a highly transferable tool. Even if it is not your intended path, it is valuable wherever you go. Take advantage of any opportunity to pick up some development skills whenever you can.

I owe this fulfilling summer experience to UFE and the WOW scholarship program and I will always be grateful.

Thanks for reading!

– Pokuaa Adu

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.

I cannot believe that it is halfway through my internship already! The summer is really flying by.  Since my last post, a lot has developed in terms of my responsibilities at the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD).

When I first began calling human services organizations, it was a bit frustrating because it was not always easy to reach the right person, or sometimes anybody at all! After a frustrating day of unsuccessful calls without feeling like I was truly connecting with people, I tried to have more natural conversations with program coordinators and directors.

Soon, I began to schedule many presentations, which gets to the heart of what my responsibilities are as a public education and outreach intern. Now, I have given six presentations, and I have over ten more scheduled for the upcoming weeks.  Each presentation that I give is different depending on the population; the settings are as varied as ESOL classes, youth programs, and homeless shelters, just to name a few.

The presentations are really fun since they are interactive and the audience often becomes very involved.  It is nice to be able to see how much more comfortable I am giving these presentations—now I don’t need to use the notes much at all, and I know the right questions to ask to engage the people listening.  I’ve also become more accustomed to fielding difficult questions and determining the appropriate responses.  My public speaking skills have certainly improved from all of these phone calls and presentations.

Probably the best part, though, is seeing how beneficial these presentations are for the people attending.  While it can often be a bit upsetting for somebody to realize that they were not only treated unfairly, but were discriminated against, it is really inspiring to see people taking notes and asking questions so that they can be better equipped to stand up for their rights.

Explaining the four types of discrimination during a presentation.

I have also been able to expand my own knowledge and understanding of the legal proceedings that take place at the MCAD.  My supervisor has been especially helpful in this regard.  All of the interns get to observe various parts of the complaint process, and I was able to sit in on a public hearing and an appeal hearing last week, both of which involved some very interesting cases.  I have attended a few lunches with commissioners and hearing officers, where I’ve been able to ask specific questions, and learn about interesting cases that the MCAD has received. This is a great way to see how the law is continuously progressing and being redefined.

Even though my internship duties are focused on outreach and are more informational than involved with changing the laws, I’ve realized that I am more interested in policy change as opposed to its enforcement. 

I have also recognized though, that even if a particular law is in place, education is essential in ensuring that the law is enforced, and that people actually benefit from that law’s protections.  Many of the people I have spoken to at these presentations did not even realize that illegal actions may have been taken against them, because they were unaware of their protections under the law. 

Thus, it is not simply enough to create a law for it to actually make change. I hope that I will use this knowledge in the future if I decide to pursue a career in policy change, and will remember the importance of spreading education and awareness in bringing about a law or policy’s full potential.

 I am looking forward to the next few weeks of my internship, and I am very excited to see what else I will learn!

Helping answer a question regarding housing discrimination.

Kelley answers a question about whether a particular scenario might be discrimination.

The past month working with Interfaith Worker Justice has been a reminder that creating change is slow, grinding, and often unglamorous work.  One of my primary goals has been to explore community organizing from a labor and economic justice perspective, the strengths and weaknesses of labor organizing in Boston in relation to my experience in climate organizing, and building bridges between the two movements.

I think that the climate movement does many things well—it has a lot of energy and momentum around youth right now; the horizontal, democratic nature of a lot of its organizing allows people to take initiative and become leaders; and a shift away from rote protests and rallies towards creative tactics, civil disobediences, and direct actions resonate more powerfully with the public and media. However, for all its innovation and energy, a major critique of climate change activists is that it is a homogenous group—white, upper-middle class—partly because climate change is seen as a “privileged” issue, especially when compared to violence, poverty, mass incarceration, racism, etc. However, climate justice sees the intersections of race, class, and the environment; those most vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation are marginalized communities, i.e. low-income, minority groups. And to build a movement strong enough to take on climate change and the fossil fuel industry, we need to make these intersections clear, create cross-connections in struggles for justice, and support communities with the most at stake from climate change.

This is where my time at Interfaith Worker Justice comes into play. Every day is filled with meetings to plan campaigns and actions, as well as participating in actions themselves. My work has narrowed to focusing on the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign—raising the minimum wage and establishing an earned sick time standard for all workers in MA; the Bangladesh Solidarity Network, which is focused on getting apparel companies such as Gap and Walmart to sign a Fire and Safety Agreement that would improve the safety for Bangladesh garment workers, and participating in numerous pickets and rallies in support of various workers trying to unionize with a fair process without fear of retaliation.

My time with IWJ has been useful in seeing and understanding how the labor movement has been successful in building a strong, diverse group. Labor organizers see their work and thus frame their issues around class and race, resonating strongly among the constituents it needs to raise. However, I’ve learned that messaging that focuses on class and race only goes so far in building community support and legitimacy if without an intentionality to incorporate marginalized people into organizing. At work I have picked up on how labor organizers intentionally reach out to a diversity of people to not only attend events but become part of the organizing process. I am starting to pick up on various habits and incorporate them into my organizing in order to be more inclusive. For example, it is important to pick up the phone and not rely solely on the Internet (which many low-income people do not have 24/7 access to). For a week of actions against deportations of undocumented immigrants, I spent hours calling housing authorities, immigration groups, civil rights groups, workers centers—any organization whose constituents could be those impacted and thus would be most passionate about deportations. In addition, we made sure at the week of actions against deportations that almost all of the speakers were those directly affected by deportations. It is useful to establish relationships with other organizations that deal directly with communities not only to collaborate with but also to utilize as a resource when outreaching—I have been discussing with various labor organizers about my own climate work and working to establish contacts that can then be later used for outreach and collaboration. Organizers also make sure to plan meetings and events at times when people are not working and at locations accessible by public transportation and nearby or, better yet, in low-income communities. Going through work every day with an intentionality on classism and racism and picking up nuisances of how the labor movement effectively resonates with marginalized communities will be extremely useful as I continue organizing on Brandeis campus and beyond, irrespective of the issue.

I learned from some labor organizers of a carbon tax bill in MA that people were upset with due to the regressive nature of how it distributed tax-cuts. Effectively, this bill would put a divide between many well-intentioned environmentalists and labor activists who would have to spend crucial resources and energy into defeating the carbon tax bill, hurting both movements. I have been discussing with various environmental organizers about the regressive nature of the carbon tax and trying to set up a meeting among environmental and labor organizers to meet with the grassroots organization behind the ballot initiative of the carbon tax bill to see how the bill can be revised to avoid these internal conflicts.

More generally, I have been working on crafting connections between the two movements to avoid scenarios such as the carbon tax bill that could have been avoided if there were communication; currently I am working on getting together a meeting of student organizers across different issues (labor, environmental, immigration) to seek out synergy and unity.  I am excited to see where my connections in the labor movement take me as I continue organizing around climate and environmental justice in the future; I especially hope to create collaborative efforts between the two issues, perhaps first on-campus to help revitalize the activist scene.

I am halfway through my time at UFE and enjoying every minute of it. As I mentioned before, I was looking forward to

– Working on my own independent project with UFE

– Joining the fight for a great cause

– Forming great relationships with the UFE family.

How do you think that is all going? Well, I’ll show you!

My project:

Many organizations use social media for a variety of functions. Like these organizations, UFE has  Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo accounts through which it shares news and event information and raises awareness about issues pertaining to economic justice, fair taxation and equality for all.

My project is to explore one additional benefit of social media tools to UFE – fundraising – and to develop recommendations and corresponding case studies which support my research findings and proposed strategy. Having worked on this for the past few weeks, it has been an enlightening experience learning how different organizations are going about raising money through Facebook posts and YouTube videos. In the process, I spend hours on different websites looking at informative, sometimes hilarious and powerful content that organizations use to effect change and encourage action. (I am having about as much fun doing this as when the “Harlem Shake” craze hit YouTube.)

At the end of my internship, I will have the opportunity to present my findings to the rest of the UFE staff and I look forward to doing so. I hope that my work will provide actionable recommendations that will benefit the organization and enable its work to continue.

The UFE family:

I have yet to each lunch alone since I started working with the UFE. There is always an opportunity to interact with any one of the staff members at UFE; from the other interns to the director of the organization. Being comfortable with the people I work with is always top on my list of things to look out for in a career and I am happy to find that at UFE.

One other opportunity to bond with the members of the organization was during a state hearing at the State House in Boston. Steve Schnapp (one of the founding members of UFE) was set to testify in support of a resolution calling for responsible state and budgetary policy. We came together to join the rally and eventually sit in for the hearing. I got to experience the “action” part of the organization and meet people from other groups and organizations united for the same cause.

 Here are some more pictures on the UFE facebook page

Last week, the other interns and I were invited to brainstorm, with the rest of the staff, ways that UFE could address federal tax issues and effect awareness and change at that level. I was excited to be a part of this and proud to be able to contribute my own ideas to the gathering. It was fascinating hearing from the earlier members of the group as they narrated (hilarious) accounts of how they had coordinated “Creative Action” (use of creative mediums such as theater and art for activism) in the past.

Side note: If you ever see dancing dollar bills anywhere, you know who’s responsible.

So far, I am enjoying my time at UFE. Since this is a major learning experience for me, each day is different and fulfilling, whether I am going through an organization’s Twitter feed, watching a webinar on the importance of email in fundraising or holding a banner outside State House.

Thanks for reading!

Pokuaa Adu

As I get off the bus that takes me to my internship, and walk into the heart of Boston’s Financial District, I think about the mission of Responsible Wealth, the project of United for a Fair Economy that I am interning for this summer, which seeks to create a more progressive tax system and greater corporate accountability. The large scale changes this organization seeks would greatly impact many of the large corporations represented in the District, such as Fidelity Investments. What I find most interesting about Responsible Wealth is that instead of fighting for change from the outside of these corporations or circles of wealthy people, the organization has created a network of hundreds of the richest people in the country who seek to further their mission. As the organization puts it, Responsible Wealth is “a network of business leaders, investors, and inheritors in the richest five percent who advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability.” This network works toward the larger goal of United for a Fair Economy, to reverse the growing wealth inequality in this nation.

I discovered and applied for this internship through Hiatt’s B.hired job search site, and after a Skype interview with my two current supervisors which I did while studying abroad in Chile, I was offered the job. On my first day I was given a large binder full of training guides as well as information about the non profit, which included a large poster containing a quote from Louis Brandeis: “We can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few or we can have democracy, but we can’t have both”. This led me to more deeply consider why I had been given the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice WOW for this internship, and how my experience at this organization could be tied back to my studies at Brandeis. As of now I am not sure exactly what I want to do after graduation (less than a year away!), but I do know I want it to be social justice oriented. I believe that this internship can help me understand how to use the knowledge I have gained from my majors in International and Global studies (IGS) and Health: Science, Society, and Policy (HSSP) as well as my minor in Economics to work for social justice, locally and globally. Through this internship I hope to gain a greater understanding of various aspects of inequality, including racial, gender, and economic inequality, and how to address them.

My first week at Responsible Wealth consisted largely of becoming oriented to the organization and its many projects, the layout of the office, and my duties as an intern. One fascinating aspect of the office is its small library of books covering many topics related to the organization’s mission. Within this library, I am especially interested in reading a book that one of my supervisors co-authored, titled The Self Made Myth: and the truth about how government helps individuals and businesses succeed. This, along with many other sources of information I have come across since beginning my internship, touch upon many current debates in the US political sphere, such as: Who built it? and more broadly, What is the role of government? It is a nice change to be surrounded by current events, as opposed to theory, which is what is usually more focused on within the classroom.

As an intern I will be involved in research and reaching out to members of Responsible Wealth, among other things. Within this realm, I have already begun to research which organizations in the US are addressing immigration reform, promoting the living wage, and preserving social security, as well as how they are addressing these issues so that Responsible Wealth can determine which organizations to reach out to and partner with when confronting these issues. I have also helped mail out the monthly Responsible Wealth Newsletter (hard to be an intern without being assigned a task like this). While I’m sure there will be a few tedious tasks such as mailings throughout my experience as an intern at Responsible Wealth, I am very excited to be a part of the organization and believe I am going to gain a lot of information and experience applicable to my future career, and be able to think more critically about topics such as social justice and economic inequality.

Here are some of the interesting articles and videos I have come across on immigration reform, the living wage, and social security.

Image Citation: United for a Fair Economy and Responsible Wealth Logos were retrieved on 6/22/13 from http://faireconomy.org/responsible_wealth

*United for a Fair Economy. Projets. Retrieved on 6/22/13 from http://faireconomy.org/programs_projects

Suzannah Scanlon ’14

Anyone who is from the Dominican Republic or has lived here for a while may be well acquainted with the phrase esta es la tierra de los imprevistos, meaning  “this is the land of the unforeseen.” Never be surprised. As a general rule of every-day life and survival, Dominicans know that the unexpected must always be expected. The only constant variable you actually can rely on is the fact that unanticipated events will come up.

I arrived to the Dominican Republic five weeks ago to work with sexually abused girls from El Caliche, one of the most impoverished and marginalized urban slums in my city, Santo Domingo. I was going to help impart a summer camp that would help them enforce what they have learned (or haven’t learned) through our poor public school system. Sadly but not surprisingly, the funding that was promised to operate the summer camp was never received and the program consequently fell through. We have been trying to get a group of volunteers to still work with these girls during the weekends, even if it is not through an official summer camp, and we are hoping to start this Saturday! Updates on it will be coming soon.

In search for internship alternatives, my site supervisor suggested that I ask for work in Oxfam, one of the world’s largest international humanitarian organizations that works in over 90 countries to eradicate poverty, fight against injustice and advocate for human rights. I obtained an interview with Oxfam’s branch in Santo Domingo, and was accepted as an intern four weeks ago. I was immediately assigned to an investigation project that is directly related to the precarious living circumstances of El Caliche.

Because of the alarming high level of poverty, socio-economic inequality, and particularly imbalanced land distribution in the country, a very big percentage of the Dominican population cannot afford a place to live in. As a consequence, entire villages and urban slums composed of shacks made of wood, cardboard or even mud by the poorest segment of the population have been built on land belonging to the riverbeds across the country, which are by law supposed to be green areas off-limits to construction due to drastic river growths during the rain and hurricane season.

One might ask, if these lands are recurrently flooded, why do people choose to build their houses there? The reason lies in that these riverbeds are often the only available land that is not privatized, and therefore poor communities without any resources have nowhere else left to go. It is, theoretically, the government’s responsibility to prevent anyone from living in these dangerous areas and relocate them somewhere safe – but the political will to help this vulnerable and dispossessed segment of the population is completely inexistent. Thousands now live in these overpopulated riverbeds, and the empty promises of being given a dignified place to live in repeatedly vanish after every presidential election.might ask

In light of these circumstances, every year during the hurricane season hundreds and sometimes thousands of families lose their homes and their means of subsistence due to large-scale floods and destructive winds. Entire villages are recurrently swept away by rivers or submerged under highly contaminated water, leaving behind infectious diseases and a myriad of other problems with each tropical storm or hurricane that comes by. El Caliche is unfortunately one of these communities.

The government, in response to this scenario, sometimes evacuates villages or slums that are at high risk of being flooded and relocates them in provisional shelters next to those communities who have already lost their homes and no longer have a place to live in. In theory, these aggrieved communities will only temporarily remain in the precarious, often improvised, and drastically overpopulated shelters until the government fulfills its promise and responsibility of reconstructing their homes.

However, in most cases, the government never keeps its word and does not give any further assistance to the refugee population past the emergency response stage. That is, the communities relocated by the government into provisional and overcrowded shelters are more often than not neglected or bluntly abandoned by the authorities and left at their own expense without access to water, food, or medical attention, not to mention the inexistence of a sewage system, toilets, schools, proper infrastructure and electricity.

The most outrageous part (though sadly not surprising at all) is that some of these communities have been abandoned in these “provisional” shelters for over 30 years since hurricane David in 1979 – and virtually no one knows about it. There is no record of how many refugees there are, what communities have been displaced, or what has happened with the populations relocated into government shelters after the storm or hurricane is over. The information has either been silenced, deliberately hidden – or the worst option of all – never been recollected because no one ever cared. It is a population that was made invisible after their country forgot about them past the first or second newspaper headline.

My assigned task: to find out where these communities are located, how many there are, how many families are still living as climatic refugees and for how long, under what circumstances they live in, how have they managed to survive, and why hasn’t the government done anything to fulfill its promise. Where has all the budgetary money destined to rebuild houses gone? If the refugee population is still homeless, who has received all the houses that the government claims to have spent millions in building? Who is responsible of giving continuity to the situation of these refugees? Their constant cries being ignored, who is there to advocate for their rights?

The level of chaos, disinformation, institutionalized corruption and deliberate negligence that is present with the funding, construction and distribution of houses destined for storm and hurricane victims is alarming and deeply disturbing to say the very least. When I petitioned an interview with government officials to request information – which by law every citizen should be able to have access to – they hung up the phone. I now have to call from a different phone number each time (and have them hang up again) or otherwise they would not even pick up knowing it is me who is calling.

Hurricane season has already started, and tropical storm Chantal came through the Dominican Republic yesterday, leaving floods across the country and 6,500 people displaced. All government offices are closed, and the country has been “paralyzed” since Tuesday and will remain so for the rest of the week. Evacuations of high flood risk areas were in place Wednesday morning, but government officials had to take people out of their houses at gunpoint, as per usual. Why? Because even if this population knows they will be underwater in a few hours, they refuse to leave their homes. Leaving would mean that anyone could come and steal the few possessions they have… They prefer to bet on the river not sweeping their houses away.

– Andrea Verdeja ’14

When starting my summer internship search this year, I reflected on how I could contribute to and what exactly I wanted to learn from a potential summer internship. After much introspection, my commitment to further the effort in closing the academic achievement gap in America inspired me to find an organization dedicated to improving public education. This determination led me to correspond with and talk to several such organizations and brought me to the site where I am currently interning – The Research Alliance for New York City Schools. The Research Alliance is a research center housed at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. The center works in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education to advance equity in education by identifying important questions for research and by providing reliable evidence about policies and practices that promote students’ academic success in order to build capacity in schools throughout New York City. Finding the organization’s mission overwhelmingly compelling, I eagerly set off for my first week as part of the Research Alliance team.

My responsibilities for the summer primarily center on working on the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), a program that seeks to close the educational achievement gap and improve college readiness and career outcomes for Black and Latino young men in New York. This effort is the cornerstone of Mayor Bloomberg’s Young Men’s Initiative, which is the nation’s most comprehensive effort to tackle the broad disparities slowing the advancement of Black and Latino young men.

Explore the Research Alliance’s recent report “Moving the Needle: Exploring Key Levers to Boost College Readiness Among Black and Latino Males in NYC.”

Forty high schools throughout the city were selected as part of the ESI. In the spring, students at these schools filled out surveys administered by the Research Alliance on topics ranging from future goals and college planning to perceptions of fairness and equal treatment in their school. Using the data from these surveys the Research Alliance hopes to better understand the impact of school climate on the challenges facing many Black and Latino young men and identify opportunities to intervene and support students more effectively. This praxis between theory and practice is critical to the greater success of any such initiative, and forming this bridge between raw data and on-the-ground policy is exactly my task for the summer.

My project for the summer is to create and distribute individualized reports for each school’s principal that focus on key findings in the data and highlight why the data is relevant to ESI and how it can be leveraged to improve school policies and students’ academic success. My first week included assisting in correspondence with the principals to thank them for their participation in the survey administration and conducting research on similar education-centered publications.

My first week excited me for the prospect of bringing principals such valuable insight on their school population and for the possibilities of policy change in schools as a result of the data and information acquired over the summer. From the very first day, my enthusiasm was further ignited by the welcoming, knowledgeable and compassionate close-knit team of researchers, data analysts and professionals I would be working with. And it was on my first day, while getting to know my supervisor and fellow colleague over lunch at Washington Square Park on an idyllic, blue-skied summer day with the faint echoes of a nearby jazz musician, that I thought to myself about how excited I am for the summer that lay ahead.

– Dina Kapengut ’14

I know that many WOW interns have mentioned how fast time is flying by – and without trying to be redundant or stating the obvious, I have to say that I’m genuinely surprised at how short this time I’m spending as an intern really is. Part of me feels like I’ve just arrived and thus, done nothing yet! But then when I take a look at the learning goals I’ve set for myself and see how much closer I am to realizing them, compared to when I started – then I see the progress.

At the beginning of my internship, I set two main goals for myself: learn how to effectively organize people, and understand how a non-profit organization works. Regarding the former goal, I received a reality check during my internship-training when a former intern, now community organizer said that becoming a good organizer (and knowing truly what effectiveness is) comes after about two years of doing this job. So I lowered my bar… However, even if I won’t become an effective organizer in such short amount of time, I can already say that I’ve gained a deeper understanding of what motivates people to stand up for a cause. I’ve also understood when it’s beneficial to move on from a specific project or to move organizing efforts from one place to another. Last week, a day before my phone-banking event was about to happen, the partner organization supplying the phones decided to pull out. A couple weeks ago I would’ve been angry and frustrated for days, but my supervisor helped me move on and find a different project supporting the same cause. This incident was also a good insight into how non-profit collaborations work. Due to limited resources and organization-specific strategies, we can’t expect everything to go smoothly. The non-profit world can get competitive and territorial, similarly to for-profit companies. Since we’re fighting for the same donor-base, the competition is extremely high – but meanwhile, we have to know how to cooperate.

I’m more proud of what I’ve learned and my flexibility in the workplace than I am of any specific project.  However, I’m working on putting content on my organization’s new website which we’re launching hopefully by the end of this week! So by Friday, I’ll be proud of a specific accomplishment. There’s even going to be an intern blog on our new website, which you can check out here in a couple days when the website becomes active. As I said above, I’m most proud of my flexibility, simply because it was never one of my strengths. I was hoping to have an office space and set working times and conditions. When I first realized that I won’t have the latter, I was desperate. On second thought and ever-since, I found it to be an opportunity to build adaptability for myself.

I’ve already started thinking about how I will transfer the skills I’m gaining here to my life back at Brandeis, and then further on. I’d like to be involved/start a campaign around Brandeis employees’ rights. While my skill is organizing, I’ve also contacted a friend of mine who would be great for planning strategy. Since the power behind fighting for social causes is mostly people, not money, it’s important that every campaign has people with specific skill-sets. I’m also hoping to take my limited non-profit knowledge and intern for a different organization in the spring, where I can also use my NEJS major.

– Viki Bedo ’15

The first half of my internship has been fantastic. It has gone by fairly quickly, and I have been having a great time, while also working very hard. So far, it is everything I was looking for in an internship.

Over the past four weeks, I have already learned so much about non-profit work and community organizing. I have learned about how to best recruit people for action and to keep them engaged, and how to help those people lead and take action. I have definitely learned how to effectively plan, and to make goals that I can reflect on and grow from. This summer, I set out to become more motivated to work even harder for causes I believe in, and this organization has definitely done that for me. Everyday, I repeatedly discuss with co-workers and the public why opting for tap over bottled water is so important and every conversation I have reminds me why I care so much about the issue. Unsurprisingly, my communication skills have grown immensely throughout those conversations.

My goal to meet more activists around my age and role models who organize the campaigns I’ve worked on has been met on a level I did not even expect. The staff at Corporate Accountability International, as well as my fellow interns, inspire me every day to embrace my passion for fighting against corporate abuse. I’m constantly reading new articles and seeing new blog posts and videos that once again remind me how important it is for us to reinvest in public water systems. For example, check out this video that urges people to tell the National Park Service to phase out bottled water.

Every week, I meet with my supervisor to discuss what we have been doing well, and what we could do better. These weekly meetings help me monitor the progress I have made as an individual, and the progress that we have made as a team. We reflect on our goals, and our accomplishments and compare how well we are doing with how well we should be doing.

Right now, I’m most proud of the progress I’ve made in effectively asking individual members to take action in getting involved in our Think Outside the Bottle Campaign. At first, I was afraid to burden people by imposing on their lives and asking them to take the time to help our campaign. However, through many supportive conversations with my coworkers, I have come to terms with the fact that I’m not burdening anyone. How could I be when in fact I’m fighting for issues that I care about and that others may care about as well?

One of the most important lessons that I have learned at this internship thus far is that it is important to be confident in the work I’m doing, and never to apologize for asking people to help because our cause is worth it. Whenever I get a little intimidated on the phone, or nervous that someone doesn’t have time to listen to what I have to say, I have to remember that they need to listen, and if they don’t have time, or don’t want to participate, they will tell me. Further, I need to convey the fact that I believe in what I am saying. It is easy to fall into a script or a routine, but what I am saying is more than that. This skill is especially important academically, as an essay will become much stronger and easier to write if I remember to write about what I believe in. Furthermore, remembering what I care about and making sure it is always conveyed in what I’m saying and writing, will benefit me throughout my remainder at Brandeis and beyond, as I apply for any and all future jobs and pursue my passion for community organizing.

Check out this awesome article about Western Washington University becoming the largest public college in the US to ban bottled water! Our Think Outside the Bottle Campaign has worked on initiatives there to phase out bottled water so this is really exciting for us!

It seems impossible that I am already halfway through my 8 weeks at AVODAH. In my time here so far, I have learned the importance of reflection. Both consciously and unconsciously, the organization constantly reflects upon current practices and programs to determine future direction. Reflecting back upon my goals for the summer, then, is rather fitting.

Before beginning my internship, I came up with a list of academic, professional and career goals, and I have definitely progressed on many of them. I learned one method of non-profit evaluation through observing the development of a detailed grant report on AVODAH’s Alumni Retreat. I have observed the challenges and advantages of integrating religious values into a non-profit’s mission through the development of this evaluation, as well as in the planning of upcoming events. I am learning firsthand about managing data as I am maintaining and creating new methods of data and resource organization. In thoughtful staff discussions about the current and future state of AVODAH, I have learned about the importance of adhering to and modifying goals and mission statements.

Reflecting upon the areas of my education that have been most useful thus far led me to some interesting conclusions. From the classroom, basic business knowledge has been helpful, and so has having a background in psychology. Writing skills have been extremely important too. The skills that have been most helpful to me so far–communication, observation, teamwork and motivation, to name a few–have come from what I consider a very prominent piece of my education: my extracurricular activities. For example, coordinating the Brandeis Big Siblings program and our program partnership with Jewish Big Brother Big Sister has taught me so much about professional communication, and I have used and improved upon that knowledge through my internship at AVODAH.

To continue, I am a big believer in passion and motivation–whatever you are doing, being passionate and motivated is key. The reality is, though, that everyone usually ends up filling roles that they are not totally motivated to fill. Sometimes, becoming passionate and motivated takes time and effort. As AVODAH is dedicated to strengthening the Jewish community’s fight against the causes and effects of poverty, my volunteer work in this field as well as my involvement in Jewish life on campus initially fueled my motivation in my position at AVODAH, although I quickly fell in love with the organization. Last week, my supervisor and I attended an intern and professional networking luncheon at the Bronfman Foundation, where we discussed what The Week determined to be the “4 Workplace Skills you Need Right Now”. One of those skills was empathy, “the ability to directly relate to others’ experiences”. Through working with my supervisor, I quickly came to understand why alumni and community engagement work at AVODAH was so important. AVODAH engages energized and intelligent young adults in a year of direct service fighting the causes and effects of poverty and activities that challenge them to become social justice leaders. To fulfill AVODAH’s mission, it is vital that after their year in service, corps members partake in the network of Jewish social justice leaders that they are now a part of. Actively drawing on the immense knowledge and experience of alumni and connecting them with like-minded individuals as well as opportunities to fight social injustices fulfills the Jewish practice of Tikkun Olam, Repairing the World, and the mission of AVODAH. My experiences with volunteer work, both domestic and international, have been most helpful in allowing me to practice empathy and directly relate to the goals of the Alumni network. 

The skills I mentioned being helpful so far–communication, observation, teamwork and motivation–have additionally all been built upon as a result of my internship. I have had many valuable opportunities to observe AVODAH staff in action, both internally and in collaboration with other organizations. In observing staff members displaying the professional skills I am striving to achieve, I am then able to practice these skills through my independent internship responsibilities with new knowledge. The workplace is very much a classroom for an intern: while it may sound cliché, the quote “tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn” is a great way to describe why I have learned so much as intern thus far. 

To expand on a connection I made earlier, the skills I am building through my internship will be transferable to nearly all other areas of life. I think it is almost impossible to categorize different skills by “classroom skills”, “career skills”, or “social skills”, etc. Independence, communication, motivation, organization and the many other skills I am learning here are virtually useful everywhere. Another skill from the article we discussed at our luncheon, one of the four current necessary skills for the workplace was being social media savvy. While this is a skill that might not originally have seemed to be professional, hence the word social, social media has already become a very educational and professional tool, and goes to show that skills can be useful in a multitude of fields.

Lastly, I am most proud of my new found love of networking. I like to think I have always been a people person and love learning about others’ career fields and passions, but through observing my supervisor and discussing the importance of networking at the Bronfman Intern luncheon, I have realized the importance of following through and following up with my connections. The importance of and power behind a network of educated and inspiring people has become even more evident as we work together to strengthen AVODAH’s Alumni Network.

– Sophie Brickman ’16

Looking into internship opportunities for this summer, I was hoping to bring two personal passions together. The first, is my academic interest in China and Asia as an East Asian Studies Major at Brandeis. The second is my deep rooted belief in the importance of spreading awareness of the Jewish Holocaust as far and wide as possible, to all humans wherever they live. A week into my work at the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Center, I knew I found the right place.

With all honesty, I was a little surprised when my preliminary research for summer internships a few months ago led me to the website of the HKHTC. Mostly because the two concepts – Holocaust Education and China – are not commonly associated. Around the same time, when I first started sharing the idea of getting involved with Holocaust education in China with my friends, many of them responded with a slight surprise. “Holocaust? in China? Really?”

But the more I thought about it, the stronger I felt about it. In 2003 as an Israeli high school student, I visited prominent death camps in Poland with my youth movement. One of my most striking experiences was seeing how some of those camps operated a few short feet outside large Polish cities. The thought that ordinary people in Poland – just like many other Europeans at the time – lived their lives for years during the war constantly smelling the scent of burning bodies emanating from nearby death camps, and did stop the madness, troubled me deeply. It still does. What troubled me even more was asking myself whether I would have acted differently in their position, had I lived at the time. As much as it might be uncomfortable to admit, that question is difficult to answer and has much to do with our education and awareness. Ever since that trip to Poland and the insights it left me with, anywhere I went and whatever I did, I made promoting education and awareness of the Holocaust one of my personal missions.

I believe that increasing awareness of the Holocaust is specifically important in China. As a United World College student in Canada in my last two years of high school, I made some wonderful friendships with Chinese fellow-students. When I mentioned the Holocaust and my insights about it to them, I realized many of them had very little knowledge about that part of human history. As China and Asia grow in power and political influence, the need to ensure that their populations are aware of what the humans can do to others when the majority of people are passive, grows as well. The Chinese might very soon be the majority that has the power – and the responsibility – to take action and prevent future genocides.

The Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre was founded by leaders in the Hong Kong Jewish Community about two years ago, with that exact mission in mind. The only institution of its kind in East Asia, the Centre seeks “to promote, across Asia, education and awareness of the Holocaust”, as its mission states. It was founded a little more than a year ago by prominent members in Hong Kong Jewish community, local educators and Holocaust survivors and activists.

In the short time since it was founded, the Centre managed to hold a number of significant events. One example is a concert featuring musicians from Israel, the United States and Hong Kong, who played songs composed by inmates in Nazi concentration camps. The concert was very successful, received a wide coverage and was attended by hundreds of Hong Kongers, including diplomats and politicians. In addition, the Centre began forming relationship with local schools, offering them assistance and support with teaching their students about the difficult subject that is the Holocaust.

As a relatively young organization the Centre did not have any existing internships positions. Needless to say, a paid internship was not even an option. To secure my internship, I first contacted the Centre last September to interest them in having me as an intern. After some correspondence, when I was given a green light, I began looking for financing, finally – to my delight – receiving the WOW grant.

As one could imagine, being a first-ever intern at an organization holds both challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, I have a lot of place to contribute, be creative and truly make a difference. At the same time, I am also required to demonstrate a lot of initiative and self-discipline – two capabilities I hope to develop while I’m here.

My main responsibilities at the Centre divide into three: Advancing the Centre’s public relations and social media outreach, and take charge of designing and editing its new website; Research local schools’ relevant curricula and work with the Centre’s education and Chinese culture specialists to design and write lesson templates suitable to be used in by educators to teach about the Holocaust; And last but not at all least – to find ways to reach more local schools and educators – within both the private and public school systems – and form relationships with them.

During my first week in Hong Kong, in addition to adjusting to the time difference, warm weather and different culture and language (even though English is very useful here), I focused mostly on the first responsibility. I spend much time expanding the follower base of the Centre’s Facebook page. The Challenge here, as it is with the HKHTC’s work as a whole, is reaching not only English speakers and students and educators in the many private and international schools, but also those in public, Chinese-speaking schools. I also set-up a twitter account, began working with the Centre’s administrator on designing a new website and met with a web designer. Additional PR related projects that I anticipate for the summer – and have suggested to my supervisors – are writing a Wikipedia value for the HKHTC, and perhaps most importantly working on translating all of these into Cantonese, the local Chinese dialect.

Naturally, my short time here so far was also used for getting acquainted with the organization’s board and other professionals I will be working with at the Centre’s office, which is located inside the local Jewish school in the neighborhood of Shau Kei Wan.

One of my best experiences so far, was visiting a Holocaust Memorial exhibition created by ninth-grade students in the Sha Tin High School. The exhibition, a result of cooperation between teachers at the school and the HKHTC, was powerful and thought-provoking. Listening to the students talk about their works and how much they learnt, reiterated to me how important the Centre’s mission really is, and how happy I am to be a part of it. The words of one student I spoke with were specifically powerful: “Our classes about the Holocaust and working on my memorial really made me realize that it’s not only a Jewish issue”, he said, “the Holocaust is something that shows how all of humanity can go wrong if we are not careful”.

– Chen Arad ’15

The Organization

My first week at American Jewish World Service provided for a joyful, eye-opening experience. This summer, I am working as the Experiential Education Intern for the organization. To set the scene, AJWS is a non-profit organization based out of New York, founded nearly 30 years ago by Brandeis’s own Professor Larry Simon. Their mission states: “inspired by the Jewish commitment to Social Justice, American Jewish World Service works to realize human rights and end poverty in the developing world.”

To bring this vision to life, the organization focuses on two spheres of empowerment that together embody one transformative force of global justice. The first sphere works domestically, with the focus of:

1.  Creating a greater critical consciousness of inequality and global struggles for human rights through outreach and education.
2. Mobilizing political activism to end regressive US international policies that harm millions of people abroad and inhibits development.
3. Leveraging the resources of our communities and nation as a whole to make the second sphere of the AJWS’s work – the international operations – possible.

This second component, the international work, serves to advance the goals of fighting poverty and progressing human rights by awarding grants to hundreds of grassroots organizations in marginalized communities throughout 19 developing countries, focusing on pressing issues from land rights and sustainable livelihoods, to gender inequality and health care.This approach to international development speaks to the very core of AJWS’s values – that people on the ground know best what is needed to create change. And with the solidarity and support of AJWS, these local (yet global) leaders and movements can make major strides towards a more just world.

Experiential Education

Reflecting on my role as the experiential education intern and the EE department as a whole, I have come to see that how this work exists at a crossroads among the organization’s duality of operations, one that I find to be very deep. In rooting the educational approach in experience and critical reflection, the learning and pedagogy that AJWS brings to our communities is undoubtedly unique and visionary. It immerses the American (and for many of the supporters, Jewish) identity and existence into challenging truths of global injustice, while always shining a light down the road towards justice. And there is no better place to encounter both sides of this coin – the difficult realities of the world and hopeful future – than in the courageous work of the grantees

These encounters allow us to see that the narratives of “us” and “them” are but one – now ever apparent as we experience the forces of globalization and confront world-wide collective challenges like climate change. In contextualizing our separate existences into one shared struggle, we are empowered to launch down a powerful path towards more informed, compassionate, and productive change. This process of critical reflection and action, often called praxis, is most eloquently described by the late Paulo Freire as the pursuit of “the vocation for humanization.” To come into work and be a part of an education which serves to make us more fully human is a truly beautiful thing.

Beginning Work

As for my own role, the first week comprised of a fair amount of learning about the organization and discovering what I can bring to the EE department and their initiatives. There is a pleasant irony in holding an internship with this department. In being surrounded by a group of unbelievable, thoughtful, and witty educators, the learning curve was a dynamic, informative, and fun-filled process with great intentionality.

The EE department is now in full throttle working to implement a brand new program called the Global Justice Fellowship (GJF). The GJF is a yearlong program for American Jewish leaders to facilitate the deepening of knowledge and engagement with global justice issues and give them the tools to better mobilize for change. For me, seeing first-hand the process of crafting and implementing this fellowship is an exciting new lens of engaging with an educational pedagogy that I have long sought out and experienced from the student perspective. At AJWS, the process it is certainly collaborative, innovative, and detailed. My work thus far entails supporting a few projects related to the GJF, and in the coming weeks will also include helping to reach out to alumni of various programs in addition to helping create a capstone homage to the work of the service trips that AJWS ran for many years, which are now coming to a close. More details to come as the internship proceeds!

 – Samuel Porter ’14

Every night for the past week I’ve come home exhausted, spending all day jumping from meeting to meeting on various labor campaigns. As an organizer of the Brandeis Divestment Campaign and being involved in the climate justice movement, transitioning to working for Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and its Massachusetts branch this summer is an exciting new direction. IWJ is a national network that engages faith communities in issues of worker justice, drawing upon religious values to mobilize community members around efforts to improve working conditions, wages, and benefits.

The Massachusetts IWJ is located in downtown Boston and works closely with Jobs with Justice, another organization dedicated to workers’ rights. In addition, Mass. IWJ works with various local affiliates, unions, and coalitions. There are currently four main campaigns IWJ is supporting. The past week I have been getting an overview of IWJ’s work by attending meetings, trainings, and various actions such as pickets and rallies. While my work plan is still developing, I will most likely be working on a few campaigns. First, I will be working to raise the minimum wage in MA to $11 per hour, as well as advocating for paid sick days. I will also be working on campaigns related to immigration reform and deportation.

In addition, I will be assisting to a lesser degree on a few other campaigns. There is a campaign called “Making Change at Walmart.” The campaign works to educate and organize Walmart associates into OUR Walmart, a group striving to improve working conditions for associates. The campaign is also working with local communities that Walmart is attempting to build new stores in by educating residents and crafting community standards that Walmart will have to uphold if they wish to expand. Tying in with “Making Change at Walmart”, I will also be helping with the Bangladesh Workers Solidarity Network-Boston, which is a group trying to get Gap and Walmart to sign on to Fire Safety Agreements to help prevent further factory deaths of Bangladeshi factory workers. Lastly, I will have various opportunities to meet and participate in actions with local coalitions and unions such as SIEU 615.

After spending last summer participating in Climate Summer, a program that allowed me to do community organizing around climate justice, I knew I wanted to broaden my breadth of experience. I found out about IWJ on the Hiatt Career Center website, as it is a partner organization for the Louis D. Brandeis Social Justice WOW Fellowship. It was a difficult decision to work for IWJ because my passion is climate justice and environmentalism, and I do believe that climate change is the most dire and urgent issue of our generation. However, I decided IWJ would benefit my organizing abilities by giving me new perspectives and experiences that I could take back to climate organizing. In my first week working with the labor movement and the faith community, I have started making connections and begun to try to bring the labor movement more into the Boston-area climate justice movement. I am excited to work on coalition-building, tying in interfaith, labor, and environmental perspectives in order to build a broader, more inclusive movement for transformative change.

I started my internship in Miami at an organization called Interfaith Worker Justice, just a couple of days ago. IWJ is a non-profit dedicated to faith-based organizing around labor rights issues. These issues include fighting against wage theft, securing living wage or paid sick days for low-wage workers, ormaking sure that overtime wages are given to workers. In addition, my organization has also been voicing the urgency for an immigration reform for years, which is currently gaining momentum on a national scale with the upcoming Comprehensive Immigration Reform to be voted on in Congress.

The South Florida branch of Interfaith Worker Justice is very active in most of the areas that the national organization addresses across the state. During the first meeting I attended with representatives from unions and other community organizers, I had to pay very close attention to which cause they were talking about (since there were so many!). So far, I started organizing a phone-banking session for synagogue members who will be making phone calls urging voters to ask their Senator to support the immigration reform. This type of “organizing work” will be very common throughout my internship, as part of my responsibilities will be to engage religious communities and leaders in political activism. I will also be attending “actions” myself – protests and demonstrations fall under this category. On Friday I already attended my first protest as part of my internship, you can read about the reasons why people gathered to protest here.

However, my work also entails parts that don’t include shouting slogans and marching on the streets. The administrative part of my internship will be gathering email addresses of potential constituencies and organizing the mailing list of existing supporters. I will also be in contact with the board members, and potentially recruit new members to join the board.

I admit that I’ve had some mixed impressions about my internship initially. I’m really excited about the work that I’ll be doing, but I was expecting more structure. However, soon I realized I’d like to develop in this area, structuring my own time and managing my own projects without supervision is a skill I will need in life. Thus, one of my expectations for this summer is to learn to articulate clear goals for myself, and become a better time-manager. In addition, as I was sitting in on a few meetings and conference calls, looking perplexed, I concluded that I will need to do a lot of research on my own. Reading about state legislation and federal labor rights, stances of particular politicians, and problems of border security will be part of my daily job. Thus, I definitely expect to end the summer with some tangible knowledge on these issues!

Viktoria Bedo ’15

This summer, I am interning at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) in Boston.  MCAD is the state’s main civil rights law enforcement agency.  Its mission is to eliminate discrimination in housing, education, and employment, as well as other areas.  The Commission accepts and investigates complaints of discrimination.  MCAD also performs outreach education to groups that may be likely to experience discrimination, and provides workplace-based training for employees and employers.  Here is a link to the Commission’s homepage, which provides information for employees, individuals, and employers about discrimination law.

One of the conference rooms where we had housing discrimination training.

As an Outreach Intern, I will be working on the Commission’s SEED (Spreading Education to End Discrimination) project, which aims to provide information about civil rights to members of populations that are likely to experience discrimination.  For the next few weeks, my responsibilities will include contacting various community organizations that serve marginalized populations, and planning outreach programs with them.  As I begin to schedule these programs, I will travel to these sites to give informational presentations. This is a brief description of the intake process, for an individual who decides to file a complaint.

I found this internship through idealist.org.  I was looking for a job that combined advocacy, social justice, and the law, and this one seemed particularly intriguing.  I emailed the Director my resume, cover letter, and a writing sample, and she responded requesting an interview.  About a week after my interview, and after some dialogue between us, the Director emailed me offering the position.

My first week included four days of intensive training.  I learned a great deal about discrimination law, the complaint process at MCAD (from the initial complaint through the investigative hearings), and presentation skills.  While I received a lot of important information that I have to remember and understand, the training was very interesting, and will be useful when I inform others about their rights, and their ability to utilize the Commission in seeking justice.

The pamphlets and handouts that we give to the participants during our presentations.

There are only three other undergraduates interning at the Commission, as well as several law school students.  I learned what brought each student to this opportunity as well as the particular roles and responsibilities of each position.

My expectations for this summer include improving my verbal presentation skills, and learning how to succinctly explain people’s civil rights in a way that is understandable for people of various backgrounds.  I also hope to expand my own knowledge and understanding of discrimination law.  Mostly, though, I want to leave the internship feeling that I have actually helped people more effectively stand up for their rights, and not feel powerless at the hands of discriminatory landowners or employers.

I am an intern at Corporate Accountability International, formerly known as Infact. It is a non-profit organization that is passionately driven by its mission is to stop corporate abuse of human rights, the environment, and any and all threats to the well-being of the public.  Corporate Accountability International uses strategic measures to pressure corporations through public support to cease dangerous practices.  I am working on their domestic water campaign to challenge corporate control of our water. The two umbrella campaigns within that are Think Outside The Bottle and Public Water Works.

I’m working on a project to support National Parks going bottled-water-free. I will also help to gather support for our organization and cause through methods such as petitions, which is what we did this past week. At the Cambridge River Festival, we obtained over 400 signatures for our Think Outside the Bottle petition, showing support for tap over bottled water, and our petition to urge McDonald’s to stop marketing to children.

I found my internship both on Idealist.org as well as through the listserv of my job last summer with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. I was immediately struck by the human rights focus of the organization. I was also impressed with the extensive application and interview process, which first proved to me that the people of this organization are serious about what they do.

During all three interviews I took part in, I could see how passionate each and every employee was. It is clearly a cohesive group of individuals who work together to make real change happen in an organized and aggressive way. I see more and more proof of this every day I spend with them. In addition to everything I have already learned from all of the organized orientation presentations about every aspect of the organization, I have also begun to get to know a great group of 11 other fellow interns. I have already learned so much about the horrendous practices of transnational corporations, as well as the consequences of their environmental and human rights abuses on a national and global scale. Much of what I learned about corporate control of our water is summed up in this incredibly helpful video produced by Corporate Accountability International called“The Story of Bottled Water.”

This summer, I hope to learn more about the specific consequences of the privatization of water in the hands of enormous organizations that take water as a natural resource that is actually a human right, and bottle it up into a commodity to sell it back to us at thousands of times the cost we should be paying for it. I expect to learn more about this type of manufactured demand, and more about whether huge transnational corporations that are legally bound to make profits for their shareholders are inherently evil, or simply amoral. After meeting with my supervisor, I am also looking forward to becoming a much more effective campaign organizer with more experience organizing individual on a large scale and keeping track of everyone in the most efficient way possible.

–Kate Cohen ’14