ILR International Travel Grant

Thanks to the ILR International Travel Grant Program, I travelled to the San Quintín Valley in Baja California, Mexico this winter to learn from the workers, employers, state and community actors about employment relations in agribusiness.

This winter I had the opportunity to travel to Cuba, a country I longed to visit due to its proximity to my native country of México and the United States.

Over the winter break, I traveled to Dili, Timor-Leste to conduct fieldwork for my honors thesis to understand how a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) project intended to promote economic development in Timor-Leste by expanding the coffee industry has affected the lives of local coffee farmers.

This summer I traveled to South America to do fieldwork for my research project.  I went to Lima, Peru to document the process of how unions from the textile industry filed a complaint with the United States Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA), based on Article 17.5 of the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA) during 2015.

Thanks to a grant from the ILR International Travel Grant Program, I travelled to Dublin, Ireland where I joined a group of global scholars presenting their research at the 32^nd Annual Conference of the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM) this summer.

Humbling. Energizing. Inspiring.”

After two days of hearing fellow delegates present their papers, presenting my own paper, and engaging in the thoughtful dialogue that followed each panel, these three words, out of the many I could have chosen, were the three I shared.

There is a famous saying in Turkish that can be translated roughly in English as “One language is one person, two languages are two persons.” As it can be quickly inferred from the saying, learning another language not only gives you a chance to communicate in another language but also changes you by creating a concrete different personality who can see the world from a completely different perspective.

This winter, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Southern India to complete some field research for my ILR Honors Thesis. Receiving the ILR International Programs Travel Grant allowed me to pursue my understanding of international and comparative labor through conversations with women waste workers in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu, India.

During the summer of 2017, I had an opportunity to do an internship for the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels, Belgium. Because the internship was unpaid, I was able to participate through the generous support of the ILR International Travel Grant.

This past summer, I traveled to Shanghai, China, to work for a supply chain management company called Li and Fung Limited. For eight weeks, I worked in their office as an intern. I knew that interning in China would be completely different than interning in the United States, and I was looking forward to learning about Li Fung’s approach to business.

In summer of 2017, I had the incredible opportunity to spend 5 weeks in Israel on a research internship with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC).

For the winter intersession of 2016-2017, I received an ILR Travel Grant that facilitated my participation in an HR internship located in Córdoba, Argentina.