Apartment visits

I am quite pleased with my Women’s Issues team and their dedication. This past Wednesday, our team, along with Public Relations and Workforce Development, visited several Bhutanese families. Their optimism and determination was transparent in the manner in which they interacted with us and with each other. When visiting the families, the primary goal of my team is to understand the specific problems the women of the families are facing. For instance, many women want to work but are unable to do so because of the young ages of the children. One suggestion, which both the interns and the women seemed to find agreeable, was the utilization of the elderly women in the families to be caretakers of the children so that they mothers could work. In our attempts to gain understanding of such issues, we constantly face the obstacle of speaking to the women on an individual basis due to the presence of men and children at our meetings. We are very excited about our visit with the women this upcoming Saturday as it will be the first time we will converse solely with them.
The group members are beginning to understand that, besides employment and language issues, there is an intricate web of complexities the refugees are undergoing, such as general mistrust of the new environment, doubts about their futures, gender roles, etc. Interacting with them, I begin to reminisce about my own experience in coming to the United States. For a great deal of time, I dreaded going to school and speaking to other people, simply because I felt my uncertainty and fear would be visible to all. I receive this impression from the refugees as well. I do not think us interns can necessarily eradicate such feelings; however, we do our best to at least put them at ease since cooperation between us is the only way of bringing forth positive results in their lifestyles. I am constantly asking my mom to share some of her feelings from when we first arrived so as to better understand the internal issues of the women.
I speak on behalf of my whole team when I say that the internship is an extremely rewarding and humbling experience. The open-mindedness, sensitivity, and optimism of my team makes every day an enjoyable one.