Connecting With Community: Empowering From the Ground Up

(Photo: Wing Yap)

Mae J. Nam, BA’05, is determined to use her McGill education to create positive change for vulnerable and exploited women, in particular those of Filipino descent. Nam’s mother was born in the Philippines and came to Canada to work as a live-in domestic worker, so it’s a cause that hits close to home.

Now a third-year law student at McGill, Nam helped found the Philippine Women’s Centre of Quebec, an organization dedicated to promoting the rights of domestic workers in Canada. Recently, Nam was honoured with the YWCA Montreal’s Young Woman of Distinction Award for her work at the centre.

Nam spent this summer working for the Ateneo Centre for Human Rights in Makati City, Philippines. She was one of nine McGill law students who participated in the International Human Rights Internship Program, which is run by the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and supported by gifts such as the Michael Novak and Kathleen Weil Human Rights Internship Award, the Lord Reading Law Society 60th Anniversary Internship Award, the Robert S. Litvack Fellowship, and the Honourable Mr. Justice Morris J. Fish Internship Award.

Nam is grateful for the support and will use her legal education to continue her work.

“The only way for a community to strengthen itself is by banding together and working together,” she says. “We’re focused on empowerment from the ground up.”