Moreau Center Social Justice Programs

IFJ 2022 blogs

MK Machi- Contra Costa Resource Conservation District

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MK and a community member working in a community garden.

Hello! I’m MK, an Environmental Science major going into my junior year at UP. This summer I’ve had the opportunity to intern for Contra Costa Resource Conservation District, an organization whose goal is to facilitate conservation and stewardship of the natural resources in the Bay Area, where I’m from.

CCRCD focuses on watershed conservation and management, urban agriculture, and sustainability practices. This summer I’ve spent time focusing on each of these aspects in different ways to learn more about them and contribute to Contra Costa County in different ways. I’ve gotten the chance to attend various watershed conservation meetings, and it’s been great to meet the people who keep these different watersheds clean and healthy. Most of these people are volunteers who are involved because they’re passionate about conserving the nature around them, and many of them have been doing this for decades. I’ve learned so much from them and their experience, and they’ve given me hope by showing me how much people can care about taking care of the environment at the same time that I’ve given them hope by showing that the younger generations can and will continue the hard work that they’ve done.

I’ve also attended many work days that CCRCD hosts at local community gardens. I’ve gotten to see how each garden operates differently in order to best serve the community around it, as well as meet all of the amazing people who help keep them running. This part especially has shown me the importance of connection, as I always leave these work days full of joy and inspiration from connecting with other people. Hearing from the people who run community gardens about how much even just a few hours of work can mean so much to them and help the community makes me feel accomplished in the hard work that we do, and I always leave with new gardening advice up my sleeve and can never seem to make it out without someone insisting I take some fresh fruits or vegetables that they harvested!

The last way that I’ve helped CCRCD this summer is by researching and putting together a resource guide about how to make bird and bat boxes in the Bay Area. When going into my internship, two of my goals were to learn more about the ecology of the Bay Area as well as have something tangible at the end of my experience to look at and be able to say “I did this!”, and through this I’ve been able to accomplish both of those goals. I’ve learned so much about this place that I lived in through high school and feel good knowing that even though I’m not making the bird or bat boxes myself, there are groups that CCRCD works with who are ready to use that information that I’ve compiled to help the environment.

Overall, I feel so accomplished and have learned so much through my internship this summer through CCRCD. I’ve loved making connections and being able to make an impact, and I’ve learned that even small impacts can make important changes. 

Tim Arifdjanov- Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, SOAR Immigration Legal Services

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Tim working from home.

Hello, my name is Tim and I am a rising senior English major with hopes of becoming a lawyer one day. This summer, I’ve been interning at SOAR Immigration Legal Services, a program of the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. SOAR Immigration Legal Services began as an offshoot of SOAR, Sponsors Organized to Assist Refugees, which serves refugees who resettle in Oregon.

Refugees often need legal aid when wading through the US Immigration System, so SOAR’s ILS was founded to meet this need. SOAR ILS now represents refugees in court and helps refugees file documents to USCIS, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Much of SOAR’s work is pro bono or offered at a discount. In court, SOAR advocates for refugees who may be, for example, applying for asylum, or facing deportation.

Helping refugees file documents is less flashy, but it’s some of the most important work that SOAR does. Forms can be confusing, and checking the wrong box or disclosing information that doesn’t need to be disclosed can, in some cases, lead to deportation for the refugee who’s filing. By helping with the filing of the forms, SOAR ILS makes sure that refugees correctly represent themselves and that USCIS reaches a just decision.

Aside from legal work, SOAR ILS runs classes for the immigrant and refugee communities. Right now, we have a citizenship-test preparation class, and a class for Ukrainian refugees that explains to them their rights.

I’ve appreciated my time at SOAR because of the stories that I’ve been able to hear. Many of these stories are heartbreaking, or sag with injustice, but it’s encouraging when I hear about the wins.

I read the case file of one client who was fleeing the political persecution of Cuba’s Communist Party, and applying for asylum in the US. Reading about the unfair detention and cruel tortures she suffered through angered and saddened me, but I was happy to read that after a winding litigation process, she got asylum and is now a permanent US resident.

In another case, a client was having trouble with the US Citizenship process because he had been unjustly arrested in the 1970s. With help from SOAR, he was able to get the arrest cleared, and eventually became a US citizen. I was able to help prep this case file for use to instruct other nearby ILS firms on what to do in similar situations.

I’m glad I was able to work with SOAR and would not have been able to without Interns for Justice. I hope to do good work like the work SOAR does in the future.

Sokvy Vin- Coalition of Communities of Color

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Sokvy attending a CCC staff meeting.

Hello there! My name is Sokvy, and I am an international student from Cambodia. I’m a rising Sophomore and an intended economics major at the University of Portland. This summer I had the great honor of interning at the Research Justice Institute at the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) in Portland, OR. 

The Coalition of Communities of Color is an alliance of culturally specific community-based organizations around Oregon. The CCC supports a collective racial justice effort to improve marginalized communities through policy analysis and advocacy, culturally appropriate data and research, environmental justice movement-building, and leadership development in communities of color.

As a research intern, I am supporting a multi-year research justice study project that seeks to have a clear understanding of the lived experiences, needs, and desires of communities of color in Clackamas County, Oregon. My work consists of conducting secondary research on culturally-specific organizations, events, and websites that serve Southeast Asian Communities in the County. I reach out to learn about their engagements, studies, or reports regarding the Southeast Asian communities and to disseminate the information about this project to more community members. As part of the project, I also do primary research – for instance, meeting and building relationships with Southeast Asians, mainly Cambodian-Americans, and interviewing the community members about their experiences of living and/or working in the County.

With the great support of one of CCC’s senior researchers, Dr. Mira Mohsini, I have learned how to integrate relationship-building into research and have a much deeper understanding of how critical and powerful it is to empower the community leaders and members in research. The research team has provided me with presentations to learn about exploitation and oppression through research practice and how to address it. The team also presented me with different methods and tools used for data collecting, organizing, and analysis. 

Sokvy at a Cambodian pagoda in Clackamas County.

This internship has allowed me the privilege to learn about different issues facing the Southeast Asian communities in the County and build meaningful connections with some of the community members that I met, specifically Cambodian-Americans.

I have greatly enjoyed my work and am more than grateful for the opportunity to work with the Research Justice Institute at CCC. I look forward to the rest of the summer working with them and learning more about the lived realities of communities of color in Clackamas County.

Soleia Quinn- Artistic Circles

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Hello! My name is Soleia Quinn and I am an English and Psychology major with a Fine Arts minor entering into my Junior year this fall. This summer it has been my pleasure and honor to work with Dr. Feldman, the executive director of Artistic Circles.

Soleia, working at her home office.

Artistic Circles is a nonprofit that works to create media for social change within a multitude of varied communities. Their mission is to help unite communities and foster mutual understanding through media. This summer Dr. Feldman’s book “Building Communities of Trust” was released, and companion documentary project is currently in the works.

The documentary plans to focus on the work of several youth activists currently creating social change, such as Andreea Coscai. Andreea created an NGO in Romania to facilitate networking so that various social issues faced by women in Romania can be spoken of and the solutions worked on. Other youth activists participating in the documentary include an activist working with the LGBTQ+ community to get the vote out, and an activist working to secure the Ojibwe tribe cleaner water and sanitation resources.

Working with Dr. Feldman has mostly consisted of research into fundraising for the documentary through grants, collaboration with corporations, and meeting with Dr. Feldman to help with any scheduling + brainstorm ideas for the documentary.

Through working with her, I have a much deeper understanding of what creating an award-winning project takes. However, organizing dozens of people, managing funds, and trying to refine the vision and impact of the project are barely the tip of the iceberg.

This internship opportunity has allowed me to learn and refine skills like fundraising, networking, as well as organizing and planning long term projects, and hopefully learning what it means to try and create lasting change in communities.

Torie Tonelli- Maybelle Center

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Hi there! My name is Torie Tonelli.  I am a Senior psychology/sociology major at UP and one day I hope to go to med school and be a doctor. This summer I have had the privilege of working at the Maybelle Center in downtown Portland. 

Torie with a Maybelle Center visitor.

It is difficult to put into words exactly what the Maybelle Center means to the community.  Less a physical location and more a collective of people working together to create a place of support, connection, and mutual aid, Maybelle is built on the idea that people have inherent dignity, worth, and beauty, and that those people are deserving of love and affection from others. 

The physical community room, where I spend the majority of my time, is always a hub.  On a given day, people wait outside the doors until community time starts.  I have never seen the community room empty. From the moment doors open to the time that community hours end, there are people, dogs, and cats bustling around inside. 

What do we do in the community room?  It depends.  Some people are meeting with staff to connect with health resources.  Some people are talking with outreach coordinators about how to best engage other members of the community, or get into contact with people that haven’t been in for a while.  Often, members come in just to talk about what’s going on in their lives.  Something I have learned from my time at Maybelle is that often when programs are set up to help meet the needs of a given community, the first targets are physical needs— food, water, basic healthcare, etc.  These are critical, absolutely, but often it means that the need for companionship, understanding, and human connection are pushed aside.  Maybelle seeks to provide a space for those often-underserved needs, and as a result it is alive and thriving. 

Anais Larios-Maldonado- Oregon Child Development Coalition

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Hello! My name is Anaís Larios-Maldonado, and I’m a rising senior, majoring in Secondary Education and Spanish. I had the great privilege of interning at Oregon Child Development Coalition in the Hood River/Wasco counties this year, specifically for their Peak Harvest Early Education program of The Dalles, Oregon, as a Family Advocate.

Anais with her colleagues.

Oregon Child Development Coalition, known as OCDC, is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing migrant families an equitable education opportunity for their children while meeting their need for childcare. It is now “one of the largest early childcare and education service providers in Oregon,” serving in counties such as Clackamas, Hood River/Wasco, Klamath, Multnomah, and Umatilla to name a few.

The program that I serve is a Migrant and Seasonal Head Start designed for children of economically disadvantaged, migrant and seasonal farm workers. The families that we serve are below the poverty threshold and receive most of their income from agriculture.

For our center in The Dalles, it is very common to see families traveling from California to work the cherry harvesting season in The Dalles and Hood River. These families are typically working for a short period, as our program is only 4 weeks long, working seven days a week and starting as early as 4 am due to escape the heat.

As Family Advocates, our greatest focus is to assure that our students are safe and healthy. Because our counties are at high risk for COVID cases, we get health referrals from teachers every day to check the students’ temperature and communicate their symptoms with parents. We normally have a medical provider on site who examines children who are feeling ill, and we work directly with them to translate to families, provide cultural context to providers, and make the children feel safe and comfortable.

I’ve noticed that the children can feel apprehensive with medical professionals, especially when they do not speak their home language, as well as the struggle that parents undergo when they are not understood or listened to when speaking about their child’s illness. I now understand the value of Family Advocate positions, and I hope that we can have more culturally competent positions who can facilitate these interactions in other places, such as the medical field.

The children at our center are as young as two months old and up to five years of age. Most of our families are Spanish speakers and are in the county temporarily before migrating onto their next workplace. In this short amount of time, our goal is to maximize the services and support that these families need, such as connecting them to resources like WIC, in some cases Bridges to Health, our partnering clinic One Community Health, and other non-profits around the Gorge.

I come from a migrant farm working household, and I attended the Migrant Head Start program at OCDC when I was younger. For that reason, I feel incredibly grateful to have OCDC as my host site for the Interns for Justice program. It feels as though I circled back to serve the community that once shaped who I am today.

Derek Berning- OR State Representative, Travis Nelson’s Office

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Attending virtual community meetings.

Hello! My name is Derek Berning, and I’m a rising senior from Sublimity, Oregon majoring in economics at the University of Portland.

This summer I have been interning for state representative Travis Nelson of House District 44, which encompasses much of North and Northeast Portland, including UP’s campus. Rep. Nelson was appointed to the state legislature earlier this year after his predecessor Tina Kotek left the seat to enter the governor’s race in November; as a nurse and union representative, he seeks particularly to advocate for improved healthcare access and quality as well as workers’ rights and an empowered labor movement.

As his intern, I have been attending meetings of various governmental bodies—like Portland City Council and the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners—and community groups—like the neighborhood associations of North Portland and committees convened to plan the coming replacement of the I-5 Interstate Bridge. By attending these gatherings, I serve two purposes: First and most importantly, I take notes for Rep. Nelson to review so he can stay informed on key political happenings in the metro region, because his daily work as a legislator requires him to focus more on statewide issues than local ones. Second, I act as his stand-in and community liaison, ensuring his presence is felt in North Portland even at events he cannot himself attend—this function is especially important for district-specific gatherings like neighborhood association meetings.

These activities have allowed me to rapidly learn about the most important issues facing the metro region, from the realms of transportation (like the I-5 Rose Quarter and Interstate Bridge projects) to education (like the effort to ban concealed firearms in Portland’s public schools) to environmental issues (like the cleanup of the Portland Harbor Superfund site).

I have also witnessed directly the real-world process of policymaking and political engagement. Frequently the public—including myself—sees politics through only the lens of electoral campaigns, with their flashy promises and bitter rhetoric, but it is the intermediary of these campaigns where tangible change is actually made; this internship has revealed the less obvious ways in which policy is crafted.

August Stone- Genderbands

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August and co-workers at Utah Pride festival.

My name is August Stone, an incoming junior Environmental Ethics and Policy major here at University of Portland. This summer I have interning with the non-profit Genderbands that is based in Orem, UT.


Genderbands is an international non-profit that focuses on providing life-saving care and resources for transgender and gender non-conforming people all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Their entire mission is helping transgender people pay for transition related costs and to provide guidance and care. This is done through transition grants, a free binder program, and community support systems such as name change clinics and UT Trans Pride.


My job this summer has been a couple different things. I have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work within the non-profit to train volunteers, organize grants, and provide information. One of my larger roles, however, is as a volunteer and event coordinator. As a trans person with leadership experience I have a unique ability to work with others and communicate issues. This has led me to tabling at 5+ pride events in UT and helping spread information about Genderbands and our resources.


With the support and help of the founder and executive director, Ian Giles, and their executive assistant Cozy Gordillo, I have learned a lot about what makes a non-profit successful. Ian has worked closely with me on how to spread information, communicate effectively with volunteers and other orgs, and the importance of being passionate about what you do.


I am very grateful for the time I am getting to spend with Genderbands this summer and for the life long experiences that it has provided me. I can’t wait to spend another month working so closely with these amazing people to help further a cause that I really care about.

Interns for Justice- Summer 2022

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We’re grateful this year for an eager & bright cohort of Interns for Justice.  Aligning with this year’s Moreau Center for Service & Justice theme: REbuild, REeducate, REconnect, IFJs will intentionally engage in learning and forging connections in communities across several states.

Over the next 8-10 weeks, IFJs will serve with organizations working alongside and advocating with marginalized communities. Through these experiences, they will deepen their understanding of social justice issues and critically examine root causes. While building relationships with colleagues and the communities and individuals they serve, they’ll develop capacity as allies and neighbors in solidarity with others. 

This summer’s cohort of interns is engaging in a variety of internship placements and formats. Several internship sites have adapted to a fully virtual format, allowing IFJs to engage in their host organization’s work while working from home, others are taking precautions while proceeding with doing work on the front lines, providing vital services to communities in need, and some are adopting a hybrid of virtual and in-person.

Interns & Placements: 

Timur Arifdjanov- SOAR Immigration Legal Services, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (Portland, OR)

Derek Berning- OR State Representative Travis Nelson’s office (Portland, OR)

MK Machi- Contra Costa Resource Conservation District (Concord, CA)

Anais Larios-Maldonado- Oregon Child Development Coalition (Hood River, OR)

Soleia Quinn- Artistic Circles (Evanston, IL/Portland, OR)

August Stone- GenderBands (Orem, UT)

Victoria Tonelli- Maybelle Center (Portland, OR)

Sokvy Vin- Research Justice Institute, Coalition of Communities of Color (Portland, OR) 

Throughout the summer, each intern will share reflections about their internship experience. We encourage you to come back often and follow along!