The past month and a half I have been working as a photojournalist for the South African newspaper, Mail&Guardian – an internship I got through the IGL’s Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice and its director Gary Knight -- as well as pursuing personal photographic/videographic projects.

We both took EPIIC this past year, which looked at “Order and Chaos” around the globe, with an emphasis second semester on the rise of populism. We became interested in understanding what this meant in India, and in looking what accounted for the rise of the BJP.

This summer I visited three counties from the Southwest part of Guizhou province, one of the poorest regions in China. My project is to find scholarships for the rural girls in these communities to complete their secondary education, as a means to boosting long-term development of the local community.

This summer, I am serving as an intern for the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, under the Bureau of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. I primarily support the International Programs team, which develops regional programming strategies, monitors ongoing programs, and oversees grants selection.

They call Shatila a camp, but in reality it’s much more of a sprawling neighborhood. Infamous for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, the “camp” now plays home to far more Syrians than Palestinians. Fleeing from neighboring Syria, over 1.5 million have sought refuge in Lebanon, a country with a population of just four million.