Second Week as an LIA Intern
Week 2 I officially started at the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution. Like always, I'm a little slow to warm up to new people and new spaces, but I almost immediately had a certain admiration for APADRC's work and the people who volunteer, staff, and intern at the office. The best word I can use to describe the office's daily routine is organic. Different people (besides the staff) come and go everyday in the office because like many nonprofits, we're heavily maintained by the volunteers and interns. But I've seen how the APADRC still runs smoothly despite an ever-changing daily lineup of people coming in.
The office takes cases from not only the Asian Pacific Islander, but the greater Los Angeles community as well, and for each case that's taken, the participants are charged $20 bucks (if that). In order to cater to the API community, there are volunteers and interns who speak different languages - Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Spanish, and even French. So for example, if someone who wanted to start a mediation called and asked for a certain speaker, the volunteer or intern who answered could forward that call to the person in the office that spoke that language, and most of the time from there on out, that person would handle the case. Organic.
Meanwhile everyone also handles their own projects or administrative duties, and I happen to be involved in the not-so-public education sector of the center. My duty is to create conflict resolution games for 6-12th graders. I'm super excited, but feeling like I'm still warming up to everything, and I've come to an understanding long ago that that's okay.
This Friday for the intern seminar we went to Tuesday Night Cafe which was dope. The space was so open and the artists we're so communal in their style that it was definitely a space where people from any background could feel comfortable. The first and only artist I was able to stay for was a spoken word artist who talked about family and immigration, and the crowd was definitely feelin' it.
That's us at Tuesday Night Cafe! Waddup!
Still excited for what's to come!
