Internship

The internship I have for this semester is with the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project (NIWAP), an organization that works under American University’s Washington College of Law. The organization is non-governmental, although its resources and research do assist and connect to government organizations (such as law enforcement), as well as government decisions related to immigration (such as those made by the Department of Homeland Security). The organization works on a national level, with resources being distributed on national, state, and local community levels. The work of the organization ties with both legislative decisions as well as judicial review of immigrant protections and rights, and so it would fit equally between legislative and judicial work, with the focus on being outcome-oriented. The purpose of the organization is to provide resources and research materials for advocates of immigrant women, children, and victims of abuse. In order to do so, the goals of the organization consist of providing resources to both victims while also creating shared community and resource spaces for advocates and legal officials. In terms of my specific internship duties, I have been primarily assisting with the web library this semester. The web library is the main database of all the resources that the organization publicly shares. This semester, I have compiled important as well as rare resources to support legal advocates in matters related to legislative history. I also have worked on their Bora 2 outreach system by approving and adding state and local organizations and their contact information to an online directory that victims can access. My immediate supervisor is Lesyle Orloff, who is also the main director of the organization. She is an adjunct professor at the Washington College of Law in addition to being the director at NIWAP