Name: Oni Thornell
Social Justice Group: Women and Education
Date of Fieldwork: December 15, 2017
Name of Organization: CARE
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Monica Merlis
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
For our interview Stella, Milei, Piper and I went to 535 Eighth Avenue which was where Monica and her team worked. This Building was very similar to the Bond Gowanus in the way that it was a large building that hosted many different Companys. When we met Monica we began to talk about what she did and how we could help. In comparason to Danielle their oragnization seemed to be more of a charity type of organization.
What I learned:
I feel as though when we interviewed Monica we got a lot of similar information as to when we interviewed Danielle. Monica told us about some of the difficulties of trying to help these girls. Some of them where that you can’t force a family to send their child to school because that might cause the family to go hungry. These girls are given certain chores because the parents can’t always handle all of them. Monica also talked about how she spreads awareness by either partnering with other companies or with schools to teach or host a lunch with them.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Monica and her team are very similar to WEP ( Women’s Education Project) in what they focus on.With Monica, we did learn a lot about how religion can affect these families. it is not as simple as just putting these girls in school. Families tend to have a lot of children because the father and mother need help with feeding the kids and getting money so they send the kids to go do that. When you take that kid and put them in school that immediately reduces the amount of work that child could get done. Which leaves the family struggling to pay for housing and food. This is something that is hard to change. In the end sometimes you can’t always help everyone and although that is sad that is sometimes the way it is unfortuanatly. But WEP and Care are both trying to figure out ways that they can work around that problem and I belive that they are very close to a solution.
