UN Human Rights Day

This past Thursday, December 9th, the Poly community was involved in the UNA Human Rights day event. We heard from a total of 6 speakers, all of whom provided the audience with a deeply personal and unique experience.

Reyna Grande started off the event with her personal account of immigrating. Grande spoke of the interminable amount of borders she had to cross after her first border crossing into the United States. After she arrived in America, she was faced with legal, linguistic, cultural, and economic borders, all of which created a border around her and her identity- separating her from those around her. To conclude the sharing of her experience, Grande asserted that "border crossing is [her] superpower." She challenged us as Americans to create an environment free of the socially constructed borders we consciously and unconsciously maintain, welcoming immigrants and those in need with open arms.

After Reyna Grande, the audience heard from Martin Zogg,- the Chair of the LA Refugee Forum and Executive Director of International Rescue Committee in Los Angeles- who asserted that we are in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. The lack of affordable housing, paired with the rapidity of Afghan refugees arriving in the United States is leading to a growing population of unhoused immigrants. Zogg and his IRC coworkers now receive cases with a mere 24-hour window, leaving them a day to find housing for arriving families of up to 14 people. In Los Angeles, it is incredibly difficult to find affordable, permanent housing for these large groups, which results in an added trauma for these individuals. After having to flee their homes, these people were placed in tents in army bases, told they were to be resettled, flown to Los Angeles, and met with a situation in which there is no housing available for them. Because of this, these immigrants must live in hotels in an unfamiliar country surrounded by an unfamiliar culture, coping with unimaginable trauma. This “invisible emergency” requires our attention. Zogg left us with a call to action. As students, he gave us three avenues to aid the situation. 1) Supply resettlement agencies with funding (funding = flexibility), 2) Volunteer- currently Mr. Zogg is working with a team of only 18 for all of LA’s IRC branch, 3) Advocate- we want to be a welcoming country.

The event concluded with a panel discussion in which non-profit organizations, PACTL, SCCM, and ARS explained the importance of their work and various ways in which audience members can provide support. Overall, the event was an incredibly significant one that left me with a raised awareness of the importance of understanding immigrant stories and struggles.

Comments

Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

I spent the past week in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, a small surf town in the Puntarenas Province. There are no stop signs or street lights on the unpaved streets of the town, but during the 3:30 rush hour, you hear a cacophony of laughter as opposed to honking. This small town- with a resident population of under 3000- seems to rely on communal joy as a source of fuel. Because the town is so isolated from any main city like San Jose, there is a lack of variety in job opportunities, resulting in what seems to be a lack of wealth disparity amongst the population. These somewhat limited jobs revolve mainly around tourism and fishing, two fairly job industries. In the absence of tourism due to COVID, Santa Teresa’s population relied heavily on fishing as a means to maintain a steady income. Armando, our hotel manager and a lifetime resident of Santa Teresa, let me know that COVID weighed heavily on the town, not because of case numbers, but because of the lack of fish on the coast of the su

Capstone Project Reflection

On Thursday, May 12, Jackie Sabbag and I presented our capstone project with our other GS cohort members. In attendance were a handful of budding global scholars- it was inspiring to see the continued interest in the program. Jackie and I outlined the specificities of our early relationship with I Am A Girl, and the grant proposal process that followed. The presentation marked a very special culminating moment for our time with the GIP. We presented a similar set of slides to our audience today to the slides that we presented to the grant donors. We wanted the audience today to fully understand why we chose to work with I Am a Girl, why the work we wanted to do through our project was important, and what the money would allow for within the Ugandan Mbale community and beyond. In addition to the grant proposal information we also shared our take-aways from the project. We spoke about the importance of really being able to fulfill our theme of empathy into action.

Drought Plagues Iran

While Hassan Rouhani closes out his term as President of Iran, the Islamic Republic is facing a serious water shortage. Rouhani has enlisted the government to aid areas that have been the most seriously impacted by the drought. Many report that the drought is a direct cause of global warming. I found it interesting that Iran, a country that supplies much of the world's oil (a fossil fuel), is experiencing first hand the effects of climate change, something that is caused- in part- by the burning of fossil fuels around the world. The drilling required to harness the oil has also impacted the natural landscape of the country, disrupting ecosystems and artificially carving away at the land. Because Iran’s economy, as well as the world’s oil needs rely so heavily on the exportation and distribution of oil, it is not as though Iran will implement tactics to minimize the exportation of this oil in the face of the drought. While the drought is certainly a result of environmental factors,

International Musings

Search This Blog