Internships
ISS Summer Internship
The ISS student research assistantships are small summer grants for students to do research under ISS professors' supervision. The students submit a brief proposal which has been screened by a professor; the research is either on a subject on which the professor is working, or which the professor agrees to supervise. A report is due at the end of the summer and the student may be asked to do a brown bag presentation to ISS students and faculty.
Congratulations to the 2008 ISS Summer Internship Winners:
Kylie Kutney - Sanky Pankys in the Dominican Republic
Lindsay Carpenter - Global Health Inequality
Chelsea Ellingsen - Global Health Inequality
Diana Ciechorska - Is the organic movement actually good
for the Earth with a focus on France.
Sample of ISS Summer Grant Proposal
Kate Holzman BA ’07 MA’08
April 2nd, 2007
ISS Summer Research Grant Application 2007
Proposed Research
I am applying for an ISS Summer Research Internship to continue my
research on alternative schools and popular education in Argentina. I plan
to travel to MTD La Matanza, an Unemployed Worker’s Movement community
outside of Buenos Aires for 6 weeks. I will intern at El CEFoCC, which is
La Matanza’s community center and home to a kindergarten, adult education
classes, bakery, and sewing workshop, as well as a small clinic. I will
live in the community and immerse myself in the activities of the
community center, focusing on the school and the adult literacy classes.
By working in the center, I hope to learn more about the challenges and
successes of community education within social movements. As Worcester
activists have already made a link to MTD La Matanza, I hope to strengthen
the bond of international solidarity, as well as expand it, by spending a
portion of my visit (approx. one week) in Buenos Aires, with my contacts
and companeros from Bachillerato IMPA (see project background). Lastly,
and perhaps most importantly, I plan to bring my research home to
Worcester and apply it to our new community center, Stone Soup, and
particularly the Stone Soup School.
Project Background
Last summer I chose to spend a month in Buenos Aires working as an intern
at Bachillerato IMPA, an alternative school housed within one of the
city’s oldest cooperatively-run factories. I arranged my internship
through the Argentina Autonomista Project’s Graciela Monteagudo (see
www.autonomista.org), although no interns had ever been placed in a school
before. The IMPA factory is part of the National Movement of Recovered
Factories (MNER), a social movement which exploded after the economic
crash of 2001. As a project of a group of popular educators, the school
provides high-school level classes to poor and working class Argentines
ages 16-70. The school was recently designated by the government as being
allowed to issue official high school diplomas. Throughout the entire
curriculum, there is a strong focus on workers’ rights, cooperatives and
histories of oppression in Argentina and abroad. As the first intern at
the school, I helped to teach the English classes (using materials about
historic workers collectives in England, and slavery in the U.S.), and
translated the website from Spanish into English to reach more potential
companeros. I also became a student, sitting in on classes in economics
and radical history of Argentina, as well as a course on popular
education. I had the opportunity to visit other alternative schools in the
city, as well as to visit a cooperative printing factory, Imprenta
Chilavert, on a fieldtrip with my classmates to learn in-depth about the
Recovered Factory Movement. Combined with visits to the University of the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo for discussions and documentary showings,
this was my crash-course in Argentine social movements.
Upon my return to Worcester, I learned that a group was forming to
attempt to create a “Free School” for children in Main South. I joined
immediately and have now been closely involved with the process for 9
months. We are envisioning a small democratic school based on the model of
the Albany Free School, where there is no set curriculum and where
children are involved in making all decisions through consensus process.
When a group of artists and activists purchased a building on King St. to
turn into a community center, the Worcester Free School group was invited
to participate. The building, now known as Stone Soup, is up and running,
and includes a large space which will be the future home of the Stone Soup
Freeschool.
Argentina’s Unemployed Workers’ Movement, like MNER, seeks to create
jobs and lessen dependence on corporations and the state. It is separate
from MNER, but was born of the same social and neoliberal political
conditions. Thanks to the involvement of several Stone Soup members and
Worcesterites, Stone Soup is linked in solidarity with the Unemployed
Workers’ Movement (known by the Spanish initials MTD) of La Matanza,
outside of Buenos Aires. People from Worcester have been to the La Matanza
community several times and documented it (see relevant literature
section) and Argentine activists have visited Worcester on speaking tours.
The small community free school there is going to be the sister school of
Stone Soup School, and recently MTD activist Soledad Bordeguaray gave
several talks here, and had a special lunch discussion with the Stone Soup
School committee.
This is where my proposed project comes in. I began to think about the
many similarities between the issues in La Matanza Soledad had described,
what I learned in Bachillerato IMPA last summer, and what we were now
experiencing here in Worcester with the creation of Stone Soup. Though the
contexts of the struggles differ greatly, at the crux of all of them is
the desire for community autonomy and empowerment, and the need for
non-hierarchical education which supports social change. I decided that I
wanted to return to Argentina learn more about the social movements and
popular education projects there, and to build on mutual solidarity. I
hope to intern with the educational projects in La Matanza, and spend some
time with my contacts from Bachillerato IMPA, and apply what I learn there
to our work here in Massachusetts.
Problem Statement:
I want to learn more about the Unemployed Workers’ Movement of La Matanza,
particularly their childrens’ school and adult education classes. Some
questions I hope to answer with my research include: How do social
movements impart their message to children through education? What role
does adult education (including literacy and job training) play in social
movements and community development? What are the challenges and benefits
of community-based education?
I also plan to re-visit my friends in Buenos Aires at Bachillerato IMPA to
continue learning about the processes and challenges of popular education
in a different context. I am looking to learn how to strengthen the bonds
of international solidarity between the U.S. and Argentina, and how this
can benefit both movements here (by applying what I learn at Stone Soup)
and in the South.
Timeline: approximately 6 weeks
I would intern with MTD La Matanza for 5 weeks, and spend the final 7 days
in Buenos Aires interviewing and helping out at Bachillerato IMPA.
Budget:
I am asking for an ISS award of $1500. Although this would not cover the
full cost of the trip, it would pay for my plane ticket, transportation,
and my food.
Round trip ticket Hartford CT-Buenos Aires= $1,079
Transportation Airport- La Matanza (taxi) = $40
Transportation Buenos Aires – Airport (taxi) =$30
Food ($30 a week times 6 weeks) = $180
Housing with local family in La Matanza = $200 *
Housing for 7 days in Buenos Aires (hostel at $10 a night) = $70
Transportation La Matanza –Buenos Aires (train), within Buenos Aires
(subway) = $20
Travel Insurance (from STA Travel) = $165
Total cost: $1784
* I got this figure from autonomista.org, a group which I was in
contact with last summer and which places interns with local families.
This does not include the contribution I would make to the La Matanza
community. I would combine my own savings with fundraising efforts to
hopefully donate $300-400, similar to what I contributed to Bachillerato
IMPA last summer.
Relevant Literature:
This would encompass readings in popular education, recent Argentine
history and social movements, and democratic free schools, as well as
several appropriate films.
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed- Paulo Freire (classic text on popular
education)
• Learning All the Time –John Holt (focuses on alternative ed. for younger
children)
• Deschooling Society- ed. Matt Hearn (children’s’ alternative ed. in the
U.S.)
• Pedagogia de la Resistencia (Pedagogy of Resistance)- Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo (popular education though an Argentine lens)
• Fabricas y Empresas Recuperadas: Protesta Social, Autogestion, y
Rupturas en la Subjetividad (Recovered Factories and Businesses : Social
Protest, Self-control and Ruptures in Subjectivity) – ed. Gabriel Fajin
• Argentine Grassroots Movements at a Crossroad – Marie Kennedy and Chris
Tilly, Z Magazine, http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2005/kennedy1005.html
(useful overview, includes information on IMPA, La Matanza and Imprenta
Chilavert)
Films:
• “The Take” – Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. Documentary about the Recovered
Factory Movement, with many details about the economic crash of December
2001, which gave rise to many of the Unemployed Workers’ Movements.
• “Work, Dignity and Social Change”- Matt Feinstein and Jesse Barnes, of
Worcester Global Action Network. Documentary about the Unemployed Wokers’
Movements, with a substantial section on MTD La Matanza. (I contributed to
this project by doing a section of the voice-over narration).
Research Activity/Method:
By interning I would be using a participant observation method of
research. I would also conduct informal interviews in both La Matanza and
Buenos Aires.
Proposed Research Product:
Upon my return I would produce a written report on my experiences, which
will be refined and presented at a Brown Bag lunch, or Academic Spree Day.
This research would be integral for my final Master’s Paper in the
Community Development and Planning fifth-year program.
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Interview with ISS Intern Timothy Sweetzer
An ISS summer internship allowed Tim—somewhat unexpectedly —to combine his love of numbers with research into factors affecting global infant mortality. In a recent interview he discussed his paid internship working with sociology professor and ISS director Robert J. S. Ross. |
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