My name is Asha Trotz-Motayne, and I am a fourth year History and Cultural Studies major with a minor in Political Science. Going into my undergrad, I was interested in a number of different topics, but not quite sure what field I wanted to go into. My interests have always laid in community work, especially as a queer black woman raised by Caribbean immigrant parents. In my studies I have largely focused on Black, Indigenous, and queer histories and stories in the Americas and hope to engage in work that is able to highlight marginalized communities through cultural productions, specifically film.
For my internship I was working with an NGO based out of Placencia, Belize called Fragments of Hope. The organization, founded in 2013, focuses on coral reef restoration and awareness. Though small, they are internationally recognized and play a large part in the community they are a part of, employing many of the people living in the village and interacting with many local businesses. They also do a lot of work with various universities and often have school groups down to do projects with them. Such groups include students of mainly various forms of engineering and anthropology. Fragments of Hope really focuses on utilising the local talents in the work that they do and giving opportunities to those who are a part of the community taking into account Belizean history and culture into the way that they operate and interact with the spaces they operate within.
My interest with Fragments of Hope began through family trips down to Placencia to visit my aunt who lives part time there. I got to see the work they did first hand, and was fascinated by the multidisciplinary nature of the work they did which mixed in sciences, social sciences, and humanities. This is because of the unique way the NGO would work with and for the local community, recognizing the social implications of loss of these natural habitats on a community which depended so directly on them. As someone who has always been interested in a number of different fields I found this unique style of community engagement fascinating. In working with them I hoped to understand more how to effectively engage in grassroots community work, working from within rather than outside, and how to integrate work from a number of different fields to serve a unified purpose.
As the organisation has been growing, they have been trying to expand their media online footprint, and find new ways to spread awareness about their work and the people involved. As a result, due to my personal interests and past experience they wanted me to do some work with them this summer concerning social media campaigns that would also allow me to do more practical work with them. My role would thus be to work on various media projects but also to go out to the cayes to examine the reefs, document them, and also to do work with the school groups that were there at the same time I was. I would start the internship in June and spend the first half in Placencia working with the NGO in person, and the second half working with them remotely.
Going in I knew that there was a lot of work that the NGO did that I was not aware of but I did not realise how much. Previously, most of what they did that I had been privy to was replanting corals. During the time I was there, however, it was not the replanting season so I got to see a lot of the other important work they were doing. This included a lot of surveying, but also a lot of community engagement work. What I found most interesting was the level of community involvement in and care for the work that Fragments of Hope does, and the long history of this work and advocacy being done by community members before the NGO was ever there. Additionally, I was able to do work with students coming down from the University of South Florida, mostly PhD students coming from environmental engineering and anthropology departments, and see the unique training offered by the programs that worked with FOH.
I am deeply grateful for the experience that this internship was able to provide me with. Though it did not count for academic credit, I found that it deeply enriched my university experience mainly in that it showed me how to do the kind of grassroots community work I have always been interested in. Fragments of Hope serves an larger environmental cause but in doing to it is deeply entangled in the history and needs of the local community it works through working with and also documenting their experiences. This is exactly the kind of work I hope to someday do.
The arts internship award was integral in allowing me to have such an experience, as it paid for my travels, accommodation, time in Placencia, and even for some equipment that was necessary for helping out with certain media campaigns. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity this program has provided me with and am excited to see the ways in which I can apply what I have learnt to my future endeavours.
