{"id":711,"date":"2019-11-11T20:41:09","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T00:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/?p=711"},"modified":"2019-11-11T20:41:09","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T00:41:09","slug":"my-internship-with-the-us-committee-for-refugees-and-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/2019\/11\/11\/my-internship-with-the-us-committee-for-refugees-and-immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"My Internship with the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By: Adelaide Szczesiul<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Addie at her internship<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over the summer of 2019 and throughout the fall semester, I have been an intern for the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, which is a field office of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in Colchester, Vermont. USCRI is devoted to assisting refugees and immigrants in receiving government benefits, finding jobs in their communities, and accessing educational services. My official title has been as the \u201cEducational Empowerment Intern.\u201d In this position, I have done a lot of administrative work (updating clients\u2019 casenotes, tracking attendance for English classes, etc.). However, I also had the opportunity to conduct intake interviews, in which I talked with newly arrived refugees and assigned them to community-run English classes near their homes based upon their previous educational experiences. I attended and helped to teach English classes, and was even able to teach a class myself when a teacher needed a substitute one day in August. By assisting in classes, I\u2019ve tried my best to communicate and form connections with people whose experiences and languages differ greatly from my own. As an anthropology major, I see cross-cultural communication as a skill that is invaluable, yet simultaneously impossible to perfect (I definitely have had a few slip-ups). I am grateful to have had this opportunity to connect with people I otherwise may never have met, and I do not doubt that I learned as much, if not more, from our time together as they did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This experience has shown me how I\ncan put the skills and knowledge I am developing in my anthropology classes to\ngood use. In one of my classes, we have discussed the discipline of\nanthropology not as a rigidly-structured field of study in pursuit of objective\ntruths, but as a unique frame of mind allowing for empathy and reflexivity, as\nwell as critical reflection. I feel like an anthropologist when I am in the USCRI\noffice not because I am conducting research, but rather because I am prompted\nto think like an anthropologist\u2014 this job has led me to practice empathy and\nstrive to understand the experiences of people with whom I have little in\ncommon, including language, and to hold myself accountable when I make\nmistakes. But beyond empathizing with people on an individual level and\nreflecting on one\u2019s own identity and positionality in relation to others,\ncurrent anthropology is also about analyzing and working against unjust systems\nof power, such as the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cMuslim ban.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My experience at USCRI has made me\nmore aware than ever of the current political climate of the US, and its\nday-to-day impact on disenfranchised populations. The office is very quiet\nlately; with the Trump administration pushing to cut annual refugee admissions\nto nearly zero, every new arrival is a cause for celebration. The decrease in\narrivals is, of course, not due to a decrease in people\u2019s need for\nresettlement. The people who would be visiting our office and attending our\nEnglish classes are out there, waiting to be allowed into our communities. I\nknow that I will never forget the day USCRI was supposed to receive a large\nfamily from Somalia and due to Trump\u2019s Muslim Ban, they never arrived. I\u2019ve\nread heart-wrenching articles before about the thousands of families trapped\nfor years in refugee camps, but it felt different to hold the paperwork of an\nindividual family who was supposed to arrive on that day, to read their names and\nsee their pictures and imagine the disappointment they must be feeling in that\nmoment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this experience, I\u2019ve\ndecided that I want to continue advocating for and learning from refugees. I\nwant to do what I can with the skills I have gained through anthropology to\nhelp push back against unjust systems of power, and through USCRI, I have\ndiscovered how I can make this happen. Several of the staff members at USCRI\nare Americorps VISTAs (Volunteers in Service to America). VISTAs receive\ngovernment funding to work for a nonprofit for a year, usually spearheading\nsome type of capacity-building project for the organization. I will graduate\nfrom UVM in May, and I am confident now that I want to be an Americorps VISTA\nthe following year, hopefully working with refugee or immigrant populations\nwherever I am needed. I feel so lucky to have spent time at USCRI; not only has\nthis experience supplied me with valuable knowledge and allowed me to practice\nthe skills I have learned through anthropology, but it has also pushed me\ntowards my next step. Though I know I will miss my time as a UVM student, I am\nnow excited to continue working with nonprofits after graduation through\nAmericorps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Adelaide Szczesiul Over the summer of 2019 and throughout the fall semester, I have been an intern for the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, which is a field office of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in Colchester, Vermont. USCRI is devoted to assisting refugees and immigrants in receiving government benefits, finding jobs in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1700,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42206,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-recognitionawards","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1700"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/anthro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}