August 01, 2008

Summer stipend supports student's work as community health educator

Clark University first-year student Jesse Mattleman, of Belmont, is interning this summer at Primeros Pasos, a non-government organization (NGO) based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, that provides free healthcare and health education to residents through its walk-in clinic and community education programs. Mattleman's experience was made possible by a summer internship stipend through Clark's Holocaust and Genocide Studies program.

Since June 3, Mattleman has worked as a community child health educator and as a clinical assistant in Primeros Pasos' main health facility. She teaches the classes on topics ranging from nutrition to puberty, domestic violence to water filtration. This is not her first trip to Guatemala, however. Mattleman spent a year prior to coming to Clark in Guatemala working for an orphanage for abandoned children and a government-funded health clinic.

One of Mattleman's first diary entries—dated Saturday, June 7—describes a health education class: "The girls we teach are absolutely silent and the whites of their eyes brimmed with longing. they aspire to be mothers, and so do i (eventually). but we are forcing them to question their timeline, to understand their inner workings, to live as individuals before living as wives, mothers, housekeepers, homemakers, or second class citizens. if this concept sparks confusion, rebellion, freedom, inspiration, or curiosity, we may have succeeded."

On Monday, June 22, she wrote about visits to day care facilities and long, grueling journeys on foot: "my feet hurt from hiking but it´s nothing compared to the stout women cloaked in colors, dust tucked into the intricate wrinkles of their cheeks as they balance baskets on their heads and stride steadily on mangled, bare feet. tears well up in my eyes because the natural grime and beauty of this place and people makes me feel privileged to have hurt feet and dirty hands."

A more recent entry reflects on how Mattleman's time in Guatemala has changed her perspective. On Sunday, July 6, she wrote, "for the last four years of my life i´ve spent significant time each year abroad in latin america. and yet i have this life that exists back home, frozen like an ice sculpture, frozen and defrosted and refrozen again so many times its original shape has morphed and manipulated into something unrecognizable from how it began. this is me each time i leave and return, the process of reshaping hidden to all who can´t come along for the process. i am changed, and continue to change."

More details of Mattleman's project and e-mail entries are accessible here.

Patrick Derr, professor of philosophy who also serves as Mattleman's faculty advisor, writes that she is "deeply committed to doing real work to promote social justice, and particularly to work which empowers victims of racial, social, or gender oppression."

The Holocaust and Genocide Studies program has been offering summer internship stipends every other year since 1999. Students have interned at many different institutions, studying a variety of topics, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum in Poland, Alternative to Violence Project in Rwanda, the Lidice Memorial and Museum in the Czech Republic and the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles. Students are awarded the internship stipend on the basis of their academic record and internship proposal. The internship stipends are made possible by the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Fund, the Debra I. and Jeffrey A. Geller Fund, and the Ina R. and Haskell R. Gordon Fund. Two other students received similar awards to conduct research abroad this summer, although Mattleman is the first Clark student to travel to Latin America through a funded internship.

Mattleman plans to major in International Development at Clark. She is a member of the Community Action, Reform, and Education (C.A.R.E.) Initiative, a student organization that works within the local community to help solve the issues of hunger and homelessness. She also serves as a student mentor at St. Peter's Church and works as a yoga instructor.

Mattleman was accepted to Clark as a Making a Difference (MAD) Scholar, recognized for her outstanding commitment to community service. She is the daughter of Wendy Rundle and Jon Mattleman of Belmont, and is a 2006 graduate of Belmont High School.