GRIP, Internships Abroad Privilege in Poverty Relief

Social Impact in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Coming to Buenos Aires, I had the choice between a renowned political think tank and a nonprofit for education and poverty relief. Based on my numerous experiences within the university, the former was the easiest, and most comfortable, answer. I was greatly experienced in political research, and the think tank perfectly aligned with my career interests. However, the lived experiences of my past manifested inside of me, and I knew I could not rightfully deny the opportunity to support the latter. 

I had grown up low-income, surrounded by minority communities, within a high school that had to confront the realities of cyclical poverty, racism, and low-funded education every day. I am blessed to be where I am today, and even more blessed to be able to return support to the communities that I know as home. 

Within the internship, I had a true opportunity to immerse myself within the communities that no tourist sees. I had the opportunity to accept one of the few, and possibly the only, internship that placed me right in the center of a world forgotten by urbanites and politicians alike. I had the opportunity to bond with high-schoolers, who like my past friends and classmates, were surrounded by a cultural conception of economic survival as their sole priority. 

As I traversed these towns and provinces, I was faced with the reality of a world that I had not witnessed in years. It was the reality of a world that I was shielded away from – that I was barricaded from. It was the world of joy and self-fulfillment that grew independent from materialism. It was a world of grit and resilience that you depended on for survival each day. It was a world of resourcefulness and a type of strength that only emerges through strife. I should know. I developed it around their age, too.

In these last few months, I have had the opportunity to envelop myself in a world that reached beyond an internship or a summer abroad. It was a church without heating in the frigid winter. It was a classroom without electricity as the sun slowly began to set. It was chocolate treats and filled notebooks as my organization and I sparked conversations of adolescent community service. Conversations of mental health, single motherhood, and food insecurity flooded the rooms. Ignorance was not an option; community service was not a choice. It was an everyday reality to be met with creativity, resilience, and courage. 

As an observer of these conversations, as much as I knew their lives and they knew mine, I could not help but feel… guilt. Guilt that I almost did not remember what it was like to have these conversations. Guilt that I wasn’t working hard enough to return to these communities. Guilt that I wasn’t listening enough, that I wasn’t investing enough. Guilt that I let myself be barricaded by a world of Teslas parked outside freshmen dorms and conversations of multimillion-dollar finances in student government. Guilt that my community service began at 32’nd and stopped at 40’th street. Guilt that I overheard more conversations about real estate investments than what the reality outside of my university looked like.

Nonetheless, as the saying goes, any type of change or acceptance must first begin with recognition. I contemplated my place between the world I always knew and the world I now lived in. I contemplated what I had let go of and what I continued to take with me. I contemplated the fusing of both: a world of strife and resilience within a world of opportunity and influence. 

My guilt was not a symbol of wrongdoing – it was a symbol that I had never let go of what was integral to my life. 

Through the experience of these last few months, my place in the world, and inside my university, has become exceptionally clear. Coming back to the United States, I take back the testimonies of who I got to know. I take the lived experiences of global adversity and disadvantage with me. And I take a razor-sharp vision of my disadvantaged past and my future of opportunity. Combining the two, I realize that my greatest strengths are in the intermediary between both these worlds. I see myself employing every opportunity to uplift the worlds I grew up in and the worlds I hope to continue immersing myself in. I hope to use every opportunity I earn to listen, learn, support, and defend the communities I hold so deeply in my heart.