Dear Dr. Robert M. Hurley and Mrs. Brenda Hurley,
I hope you are well! This is Catriona Arnott, the grateful recipient of your generosity this year. Before I tell you all about my summer, I just wanted to thank you for the incredible support you have provided to me as I had my first professional work experience. As a young student, I really cannot describe how much pressure has been relieved thanks to your internship award – not only have you helped me take care of my necessities, but to also be able to explore my ‘digs’ for the summer and have a fantastic time. I really do think of the community in Northwest Connecticut as my second home now! Incredible generosity like yours makes amazing experiences like mine happen. I really do mean it.
As I had mentioned in my earlier letter, this summer I have been working at Red Sand Project. In its most basic form, RSP is a participatory artwork that simply entails pouring red sand into the cracks of the sidewalk to draw attention to the vulnerabilities that lead to human trafficking, labour exploitation, and violence. On a broader scale, we collaborate with community organizations, survivor service providers, educational institutions, arts and culture foundations to help them facilitate awareness events and community-wide installations of the project. We then help groups formulate action plans to direct funds towards anti-trafficking organizations working on the ground, in research, and with survivors, to volunteer their time, and take other concrete steps in working towards a fairer world. I am a very strong believer in creating everyday ways for everybody to participate in social justice, something that working as a community outreach intern for the project allows me to do.
My work has entailed two long-term projects and other ongoing work, visits, and community engagement. My main project has been a community outreach directory aimed at identifying local organizations working on anti-trafficking, other social justice missions related to the vulnerabilities RSP aims to highlight as risk factors for trafficking (e.g., gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, and many more), arts and culture, as well as organizations seeking to positively engage their communities. I then innovate ways our project can uplift their work and missions, connect with them to learn more about them (this is one of my favourite parts), and brainstorm ways our project can further their work. Highlights so far have included holding a community-wide installation with survivor service and advocacy providers in Vermont, visiting the headquarters of Razom for Ukraine in New York City, and – most of all – tabling the Green Corn Festival with the Institute for American Indian Studies and discussing how our project can raise awareness for missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.
This experience has taught me an incredible amount about civil society and the grassroots organizations that make our world go around. A new pathway I have discovered I want to explore from this experience is analyzing, understanding, and potentially working to advance current public policy for survivors of trafficking and exploitation, from a survivor-led approach that ensures care and support to those who have been harmed. I would really love to use the incredible education I am receiving in political science and economics for such incredible and necessary work! This is not a realization I believe I would have had so soon in my education or even at all if it had not been for such incredible support.
Thank you to the incredible McGill International Experience Award founders, Dr. Robert M. Hurley, and Mrs. Brenda Hurley for making this experience possible!
