My name is Kai Trotz-Motayne and I am currently going into my fourth year at 91社区. This summer I had the privilege of interning at Red Thread Women鈥檚 Center in Georgetown, Guyana. As a Canadian of Guyanese descent, my parents have always ingrained in me the importance of returning 鈥榟ome鈥� and giving back. I am currently completing a Joint Honours degree in History and African Studies with a double minor in Political Science and Communications. My particular interest is in the African diaspora and the ways in which black communities have formed community throughout history. My particular interest is in political movements 鈥� which seems most relevant right now. In the future I would ideally hope to do non-profit work in communities that resemble my own. My minor in communications helps me in that realm. Though these four areas of study may sound somewhat unrelated, they offer me very different ways of learning that I think I will apply to my future endeavours. At Red Thread, I found that all were quite useful.
Red Thread in particular has a great deal of importance both for me and for the country which I come from. Guyana is a small country on the northern coast of South America that not many people know about. I think for my personal growth I thought it would be important to go back to Guyana for an extended period of time 鈥� something I had not done since I was very little. Guyana has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and increasingly high rates of domestic violence. In the most recent years, these issues have been pushed further to the back as Guyana has found a lot of oil on its coast 鈥� so much so that Forbes predicted it would have the largest economy by 2030. Headlines often elude to the idea that with this influx of money into the country problems will be fixed, however many societal issues will persist despite the new money. My primary objective through this internship was to witness how a grassroots organization truly worked, survived, and ultimately thrived.
Red Thread is the only organization led by grassroots women in the country. Most of the women who work at Red Thread are women who are survivors of domestic violence. The mission statement of Red Thread is to organize with women across race and class to, 鈥榗ross divides and transform conditions.鈥� Red Thread looks to work with women who experience unequal power conditions, whether it be at home or at work. The organization began as a community project focused on labour rights as it pertained to women. One of the founders, Andaiye, had said, 鈥淲omen are poor not because we don鈥檛 work hard, women are poor because the work that women do is unpaid or low paid.鈥� Red Thread looks at the intersections of oppression within the country, particularly the effects of poverty.
The circumstances of my summer internship were quite unusual. Rather than taking the seven-hour flight down to Guyana, I completed the internship from the solace of my room in Toronto. In recent years, Red Thread has been in need of funding, and given the growing importance of online presence, I was tasked with curating and creating one for the organization. I recreated their Facebook, email, and Google account. Additionally, my responsibilities consisted of gathering information and organizing it in a fashion I thought would be best suited for the website.
I definitely had a lot of highlights for this internship. What has stuck with me the most was interviewing the current members of the organization. For the website, one of my tasks was to create a page for the women who were current members of the organization. For the duration of my internship I was speaking to the heads of the organizations and was unable to really speak with the women who had smaller roles. Speaking to them gave me a completely new perspective of Red Thread. Many of these women opened up to me quite freely about their own experiences with domestic violence. I found it so empowering how these women were able to come out of their own painful situations and continue to offer support to other women going through the same. The experience of being able to talk to these women one-on-one definitely changed my perspective and made me gain even more respect for the work that they do every day.
I think that this experience has impacted me. Before my area of study focused on large social movements. In class, I found that what we learnt was often defined by large victories, but this internship has taught me the importance of the little victories. Everyday victories include a woman standing up in court against her attacker, or a worker standing up against their employer for an adequate working environment. I have always been interested in non-profit work, but I think this internship has given me a greater interest in grassroots work, particularly that which is run by women. Especially during COVID-19, when women in vulnerable positions are forced to stay at home, the work and protection offered by the women of Red Thread are even more important.
In a weird way, I also feel that there was a lot to learn from being placed in a remote internship. The experience, frustrating at times, humbled me and brought to light many of my everyday privileges. Adapting to a remote internship was difficult at first but setting up a space in my house and dedicating specific hours taught me the ways in which I needed to improve both my disciplinary and organizational skills. Additionally, because I was not in Guyana and because of the new regulations regarding COVID, the women at the organization were not as easily accessible. Many of the women had children and elderly they needed to care for throughout the day. This forced me to be a lot more independent with the work I did for the organization, and it forced me to make decisions based on my own judgments. This was beneficial as it was the first time I had been given such a responsibility in a work environment. Similar to most people, the most difficult part for me was staying home as I am quite an antsy person naturally. I decided to volunteer my extra time by working at a bookstore called A Different Booklist, one of Toronto鈥檚 two black-owned bookstores. Throughout the summer on evenings and weekends I would volunteer and help with organizing, receiving, and sending out orders. As a community center/bookstore there were a lot of similarities I saw with Red Thread.
Though I learned a great deal from my remote internship, I do think it is important that I do take time out in my future to go down to Guyana and work on the ground with the women. Despite not meeting these women in person, I do feel as if I have created a relationship with them through our constant online interactions. In the future, when travel reopens, I hope to use the money I was able to save from this summer to go back down and spend time getting to know the women and the organization in person. Overall, this experience is one that I will forever cherish, and I would like to thank Mrs. Mary K. Wemp for providing me with incredible opportunities like these.
