* Completed projects. I am a finisher. I enjoy the imagining and planning and creating, but I love the finishing. (Details, delegated.) This week two of my primary assignments were ticked off the (growing!) list. The Conference on Tuesday, as I mentioned previously, was an encouraging and exciting event. Actually, it was really more of a beginning. Now I look forward to thinking creatively, along with my coworkers, how to best incorporate the ideas and actions proposed by the various pastors and leaders to end forced labor. But step one, finished.
* Laughing and sewing until 3am with fellow delirious colleagues/perfectionists to finish the Global Prayer Gathering gifts. 250 lucky individuals will be the recipients of reusable shopping bags, screen-printed with drawings by children released from facilities using forced labor. These gifts are a token to remind them to pray for IJM and our work specifically. The Global Prayer Gathering is next weekend, in DC. The Field Office Directors from around the world will fly in to lead conference-goers in prayer for their respective office's specific needs. I have been working on power point presentations, the aforementioned gifts, and stories that our director will share to illustrate the challenges and triumphs our office continues to experience. Part one is finished: after numerous trips to the chaotic market called Parrys to buy the bags and haggle over prices, back and forth and many proofs with the printer, malfunctioning sewing machine(s) and re-calculating fabric measurements to accommodate our ambitious project. Who knew Adobe Photoshop, needles and thread were part of my Community Relations internship?
* Freedom Training. An incredible half-day spent "in the field" with our aftercare staff, who were leading a 3-day crash course in basic life skills for the most recently rescued laborers. After a rescue operation, IJM staff conducts Freedom Training for the families who came out of the facility to teach them crucial lessons like how to open a bank account, basic legal rights, health and hygiene, vocational and school options. Afterwards, each aftercare manager will begin more in-depth, long term aftercare for each individual family and visit them in their respective village for the next two years. I was amazed and humbled to witness the passion of the IJM staff leading the training. I discovered that a camera is an excellent bridge builder between a non-Tamil speaker (me) and children (who, understandably, love to see their smiles captured on my screen). I observed victims, from grandparents to parents hardly more than seventeen years old, shut their wearied yet hopeful eyes as they learned how to express various emotions in healthy ways. I sat on a faded straw mat on the floor with a middle-aged couple, their son and an IJM Advocate to participate in an exercise to get them talking about their hopes and their dreams for a free future. Incredible.
* Pizza Hut pizza and even better conversations shared around our dining room table on Friday night. Fellow interns and a few staff trickled in over the course of the evening to partake of our makeshift feast, legal banter (mostly over my head) and childhood stories (mostly embarrassing).
* Bachata. A dance from the Dominican Republic. A class with significantly more males than females. An instructor who told us practicing is as easy as bending your knees while standing on the bus to practice your hip swivels. Sometimes I wonder, where am I?!
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