Internship Spotlight: Rishi Kalaga - VioDemos

I would like to begin by thanking Mr. Gavin Brown for generously supporting my internship opportunity, through the Susan Casey Brown Fund for McGill.

My internship with VioDemos in Santiago, Chile, has been a life-changing experience, and I am incredibly grateful to Mr. Garvin Brown for giving me this opportunity. I am entering my third year in political science and have always been passionate about democracy and human rights. Born in Calgary, Alberta, I grew up in a family that always talked about politics. After coming to McGill, I felt my political ideas shifting due to the broader variety of perspectives around me. During my time at my internship, I saw another side of politics that I never would have been able to see had I stayed in Canada this summer. Following this experience, I want to attend law school, specializing in constitutional and human rights law.

I chose this internship because I shared the same vision that VioDemos had. They put human rights and democracy at the forefront of their mission, two areas that are incredibly important to me. Chile was an ideal location for this internship for two main reasons, in addition to it being where the organization was located. The first was that Chile fascinated me as an example of a country that was able to transition largely successfully from authoritarianism under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet to a thriving democracy. Their democracy is still new and faces many challenges, as all democracies do, but its successes are not ones to be overlooked either. I wanted to know more about how they were able to achieve this by working with people who had experience in this area. The second reason was that I wanted to put my Spanish skills into practice in a foreign country and workplace setting.

As an intern at VioDemos, I helped the organization with various tasks and projects related to social outreach and community building. I spoke to many community members with experience in human rights work and helped strengthen connections for the organization. I volunteered at events the organization hosted, such as book launches, and sat in on meetings for ongoing projects. I also assisted my supervisor, Prof. Hugo Rojas Corral, with any tasks he needed assistance with. This work brought in my experience studying political science by allowing me to engage in conversations I had. I felt more comfortable sharing my opinions about ongoing political matters and the organization's work.

A challenge I faced during my internship was the language barrier. Even though I am fluent in conversational Spanish, the organization's work mainly concerns human rights law, which is more advanced than what I am used to. This made it quite difficult for me to feel connected to the organization initially because the conversations that people would have would sometimes go over my head, and I would get lost or have to ask for clarification. Over time, I began to pick up on key vocabulary and got more comfortable asking for clarification. I had finally started to fit in with the team during a lunch that included some members of the organization, where I understood the conversations. Of course, not every word, but I felt a lot more comfortable than I had earlier. It was an experience that I will remember for years to come.

While this internship was not for academic credit, it will undoubtedly aid in my studies in political science, as it gave me first-hand experience working in an organization that studies violence and democracy. I now understand the perspectives of people who lived through this transition due to my community-building work. This gives me a perspective that goes beyond just articles and textbooks. I also want to enter this field after working alongside such talented people who focus on constitutional law. If it were not for the Susan Casey Brown Fund for McGill and the support of the Arts Internship Office, I would not have been able to participate in this internship because the financial costs would have been too high. I am genuinely grateful to have been given this opportunity. Thank you to Mr. Garvin Brown for making this experience possible!