Service Learnings

I am involved in YWLP, the Young Women's Leadership Program, and the girl that I am mentoring is a part of a Puerto-Rican family. This definietly adds a transnational feminist aspect to it, as her family is very traditional in the sense of a hispanic mother-daughter bond, values, and lifestyle. I feel as though I am working on the akill of versatility and acceptance of different lifestyles, as that is an important and crucial aspect of transnational work, especially when one is coming from a standpoint of United States heavily-ethnocentric understanding. Each time that I travel, I am able to broaden my perspective about ways of thinking. Currently, she has entered in a beauty pagaent and I am trying to be supportive while firmly expressing my belief that certain areas of our society have been constructed in a way in which to promote competition and aggression amongst females. Also, her quincenera is being planned, and her older brother is a junior high school student in colorguard, which her mother does not much like, and so her mother favors her joining cheerleading instead.

For one week I collected petitions through the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) for the Student Government to add a referendum to the student government association presidential elections in which students would vote for or against support of UCF purchasing merchandise from sweat-shop-free labor. Unfortunately not enough signatures were collected.

Another large project was a counter-action against the Genocide Awareness Project. We camped out in tents to reduce their space in half at 4 in the morning, worked out 'zoning' with campus police officers, and were present for the entirety of the day offering students a chance to speak with others about their views. I worked with NOW and VOX to do this, and am currently working on an "instruction manual" of sort to document the successes and shortcomings of the action. This relates to transnational feminism because of the historical genocide, and women's global access of and to reproductive rights.