Name: Emma Diamond
Social Justice Group: Human Trafficking
Date of Fieldwork: January 10, 2018
Name of Organization: Lifeway Network
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Lima James (Education and Development Manager), Joan S. Dawber (Executive Director and Founder), Courtney Biederbeck (Director of People and Strategy), Melissa Camadro (Director of Development), Jeannie Colangelo (Director of Finance and Technology)
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
My group and I went to Lifeway Network’s office in Queens. We met and interviewed many women with leadership positions at Lifeway Network. We even got to talk to the founder of this organization.
What I learned:
I learned a lot about Sex Trafficking from this fieldwork. Similarly to our interview with Cindy Bombeeck from Restore NYC, we learned a lot about Safe Housing programs. We learned that Lifeway has four different Safe Housing locations in New York. One of these houses is an emergency Safe Home, while the other three are permanent. Women can stay in the permanent homes for up to a year and a half. All of the Safe Houses have a different amount of women in them at one time. Another thing we learned about the Safe Housing Program is that three Nuns live in each Safe House at one time. The Nuns have other things going on in their lives, but one Nun is always in the Safe Home at one given time during the day. When my group and I first arrived at Lifeway’s office we talked to Lima James about what exactly she does. We learned that her job is to spread awareness and teach as many people as she can about Human Trafficking. Overall, I learned a lot on this fieldwork.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Something I learned about Social Justice work from this fieldwork is that it takes many people to make a difference. My group members and I met the leadership team and Lifeway Network. All these women had completely different responsibilities and jobs. This helped me realize that many different types of people are needed to make Social Justice work possible. For example, Lima James’ job is to spread awareness about Sex Trafficking, while Jeannie Colangelo’s job is to manage all the money that Lifeway Network has and make sure it is going to the right places. These two jobs are very different from each other, but are both vital to the success of this organization.
