Shaina Gilbert:
My name is Shaina Gilbert, Class of 2010. I earned my bachelor's in sociology, as well as in HSSP, and today I'm a member of the Legacy Fund Advisory Committee. So in the summer of 2009, I'm proud to share that I myself was also a Legacy Fund for Social Justice WOW recipient. From my internship, I was interested in traveling down to Hinche, which is my mother's hometown in Haiti to work in the education sector as a means of empowering their youth.
Shaina Gilbert:
I strongly believe that social justice work and change for Haiti begins with better leadership, and who better to be the catalyst for that change than the next generation who will lead, which is the youth. I wanted to support them and empower them. I figured that since it was the summertime, the children would be out of school and I could help support or even expand an already existing summer program or activity so that more youth could participate. In researching how I could make this particular internship experience happen in Haiti, I found that in general summer programs for children in that community did not exist.
Shaina Gilbert:
So in that summer of 2009, I created my own internship experience by planning, organizing, and directing an academic leadership program called Empowering Through Education Camp, also known as ETE Camp. My goal remained the same, empower their youth living in Haiti through education. That summer the camp served 43 youth participants. We hosted a free program that offered four different classes that's modeled after similar programs that I experienced when I was growing up. The four classes consisted of a literacy class, math, engineering, and a leadership class. We provided them breakfast, lunch, camp t-shirts, recreational activities, and school supplies. We visited their city hall and introduced them to their mayor, hosted a parade around the community, and ended the summer with an extraordinary closing ceremony showcasing the amazing leaders and their talents.
Shaina Gilbert:
After serving the great impact of the program in the Hinche community, I decided to continue this work of empowering Haitian youth through education. So in 2011, two years after my internship at the camp, became an official nonprofit organization. I hired Haitians living in the area to join our staff, recruited volunteers and unpaid interns to travel to Haiti and join our staff as well, some of whom are also Legacy Fund Social Justice WOW recipients.
Shaina Gilbert:
To date we have worked with over 300 youth participants living in Hinche and ETE Camp has had 13 consecutive summers, which includes this past summer. Unfortunately, I cannot travel back and forth to Haiti as I used to, but today our program continues because the ETE Camp alumni for now in their twenties continue the work, as they now staff and operate the summer program for the young people living in their community. I'm very, very proud of them and the hope that they bring to Haiti.
Shaina Gilbert:
Needless to say, my summer as a Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice recipient was a life changing one for me that has had a ripple effect in other lives as well. I'd like to say that my learning key takeaway would be if something does not exist and yet the need is still there, make your own lane and be the change you wish to see.
Alison Cantor:
I am Alison Cantor. Over the summer I participated in an internship with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, and more specifically with the Massachusetts Child Welfare Coalition, which is led by Susan Elsen, who's an attorney regarding child welfare issues at MLRI, which is the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. And just to give you some more background, MLRI provides statewide advocacy and leadership in advancing laws, policies, and practices that secure economic, racial, and social justice for low income people and communities. So they do a lot of great work, and part of the job of some of the lawyers that work at this organization are leading or being part of different coalitions within the group that they specialize in, so for Susan Elsen it's child welfare things.
Alison Cantor:
So I was able to sit in on a lot and take notes and our meeting minutes for a lot of the different meetings that the coalition was having over the summer and several of their work groups, one being the Family Connections Work Group, and another group being the Mandated Reporting Strategy Work Group. And it was really great too specifically that I had a Brandeis connection there because ... Well, essentially I originally got the internship through a professor actually at Brandeis, Professor Stimell, who was teaching at the time, and I think is still teaching the Advocacy for Policy Change class, where we were working on different bills to help support those different bills that would also usually also promote social justice initiatives.
Alison Cantor:
And so through her, I found out about this internship and got in touch with Susan and ended up working with attorney Susan Elsen, as well as a recent Heller School graduate, who's now working in the public policy world, which is very exciting. Yeah, Professor, Stimell is a legend. She's great. And so from there, I learned more about the system and child welfare in the state of Massachusetts, which apparently it's not ... Child welfare in Massachusetts, you might think is good, but essentially if your child is put in the system, it's a very difficult thing to get out of. And there's a lot of things people think about child abuse in Massachusetts that just are incorrect. Many people are reported for child abuse, but really oftentimes it's really neglect and people just don't have the resources to provide for their children and they're put into the system instead of the government trying to provide resources for people.
Alison Cantor:
So that's kind of what I learned in summary from the internship, and there's a lot of work to do with legislative advocacy to talk to legislators and explain to them what is really going on and how we can help families, and help families stay with their children and just make sure they have the resources they need to succeed. So I learned about, a lot about what goes on in democracy in these meetings regarding child welfare and things that also relate to mandated reporting, which is ... Mandated reporting is when someone, they're designated as a mandated reporter, sometimes if they're a teacher or also in a position where they work with students and they need to be also more educated on what they really should report or not.
Alison Cantor:
And then just going beyond that, I went to different online conferences where heard from different child welfare experts or people that have actually been impacted directly by the child welfare system, whether they were in the foster care system themselves, or they are an attorney who worked with child welfare issues, or they were a parent who has been impacted by the system. And it was also just really great hearing and working with other lawyers who do things around advocacy because sometimes I think people think that lawyers do things like just civil cases or things related to divorce or other matters, like if someone gets injured, like a personal injury lawyer, but there's also lots of lawyers that do things around advocacy and it's really great to see the many things you can do with a law degree.
Alison Cantor:
So although I don't plan on becoming a lawyer, I do think it was really interesting to work with lawyers, and I'm also still continuing with them over the summer ... I mean, not the summer because summer is done. Over this fall to research more about mutual aid and how mutual groups can help people who may be at risk of getting involved in the child welfare system. So it was a really great experience and I'm so thankful I was able to get the grant for this experience. And I've been also enjoying, just a side note, hearing everyone else's presentations. Super cool stuff going on and things to aspire to. So thank you, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experience.
Jolecia Saunderson:
Hi, my name is Jolecia and I am a sophomore at Brandeis. Thank you so much to the WOW Foundation for giving me this opportunity and this experience. During my experience over the summer, I was a summer intern at Power In Place, which is a woman in politics internship, and it allowed me to see the importance of having different voices inside of politics and in spaces that aren't usually seen as much. And I feel like that was important to me because I made so much connections there as well as in my hometown of Brooklyn.
Jolecia Saunderson:
So I was going through the internships, because I remember I was taking Polling the American Public. It's cool, that she was the TA for that and she was super cool, and I also took the lovely Dr. Amber Spry's class and I miss her so much. But yeah, I took their class and it made me realize some of the things in politics that I was really interested about like education, equality, or women in equality and just gender equality overall. And that made me realize that there was so much in the world that I wanted to change, especially in my community, since I was seeing it right in front of me and just wanting to make that revolutionary change.
Jolecia Saunderson:
So somebody who I talked to was Katrina, who was the head director of the organization, and I remember specifically meeting with her and we would talk about the different things that we wanted to change. And when I was working inside of the groups that I was in, which was marketing and , so I'm a person who I'm really interested into spoken word as an outlet of expression, an outlet for justice, so is basically where you combine politics with spoken word and poetry, which was really cool because it allowed me to express who I was and do the things that I love to do.
Jolecia Saunderson:
I created a poem titled The Movement Lives On, as well as like looking at the things that were really important to me inside of that. And in addition, I talked to Lauren who was a part of Hyatt, she was my advisor, which was great because I talked to Lauren about my year as a freshman and I was able to grow through that experience. In addition, something that I loved about this internship towards the end was that I was finally able to meet and network with a judge, Judge Harriet Thompson in Brooklyn. And when this lady was talking to me, it's like she was another great aunt who just gave me the wisdom that I needed to I feel come into my sophomore year. Because my freshman year, it was interesting, it was online, but it was just ... It was interesting for me.
Jolecia Saunderson:
So I know that I wanted to come here with the most optimistic mindset ever, so she gave me so much advice about character building, about being a leader, what it truly takes. And I remember walking in her office and feeling so inspired by the degrees on her wall and just seeing how humble she was and how warm that energy was, and to be able to be in a space that ... Because I've been going to downtown Brooklyn all my life, but I didn't even know the things that I was passing by, I never went inside, never had the opportunity to, never knew who was making the decisions inside of my community and how it was changing it. So being able to literally shake hands and talk to somebody like they're a friend that I knew for a thousand years of my life is crazy, and I love that so much. So yeah ... Oh, let me turn on my camera. I'm sorry, I was in a classroom, but hello everybody. But that's basically my experience. Thank you.