CAPA WORLD

Claire Shrader is an official CAPA blogger for spring 2018, sharing her story in weekly posts on CAPA World. A Pre-Occupational Therapy major at Mississippi College, she is studying abroad in Buenos Aires this semester.

In this week's post, Claire gets to know her favorite Buenos Aires professor Marlena Reimer better and details Marlena's impactful experiences and social justice work.

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When I first “met” Marlena, it was through a video chat Spanish interview. I was kind of terrified because I wasn’t sure what exactly would happen if I did badly on my Spanish language interview, and it was just a few weeks after Christmas so I was seriously rusty.

Meeting Buenos Aires resident director Marlena Reimer in person!

At the end of the interview, she asked if I had any more questions. Soon after the interview, my brothers enlightened me that that question was about Argentina, CAPA, the study abroad experience that we had literally just been discussing. Did I ask any questions relating to these things? No. I asked her what brought her from her home state of California to Argentina. My brothers mercilessly made fun of me when I told them the details of my interview and my question at the end. But I recognized that her story was one I needed to know even just from that odd little interview, and so I’m so glad I got to sit down with her last week and ask her as many questions as I wanted!

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Elizabeth is an official CAPA blogger for fall 2017, sharing her story in weekly posts on CAPA World. A Communication major at Lasell College, she is studying abroad in Dublin this semester.

In this week's post, Elizabeth travels to Galway with her fellow CAPA students to watch a play on wrongful conviction and incarceration.

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As the lights dimmed, 10 people walked onto the stage and sat behind music stands. The next 90 minutes consisted of a play about six stories of people who were wrongly convicted of a murder and put on death row. Through each of these stories, the audience learned about the different aspects of their cases and the lengths of time that passed before their innocence was found. As one of the characters finished their last monologue, the light dimmed and an actress started to singing Amazing Grace. The entire audience was on their feet with applause and admiration for the actors.

This past Sunday I had an incredible opportunity to travel to Galway, Ireland, to watch a performance of The Exonerated at the Town Hall Theater. The theater did not contain many seats, but the venue was full of interest and passion. Written in 2002 by Jessica Blank, the play jumps between the stories of six individuals and their time in the U.S. justice system.

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Words by Lydia Johnson, a CAPA London Student Council member and Fashion Design and Merchandising from Albright College. She was involved in the organization of CAPA's recent Human Rights Conference.

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When I first saw CAPA's Human Rights Conference advertisement, I thought to myself that has nothing to do with me. Since I am not a social justice or law major, this event seemed to be unrelated to me. But life has a funny way of changing what one thinks.

Before CAPA, I had no interest in student government. However, when I had the opportunity to participate in the Student Council, I took a leap of faith and applied. After joining the Council, the Human Rights Conference was presented to me again as a way to get involved. This time I was ready to take the call.

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An Interview Series with CAPA's Human Rights Conference Student Volunteers

CAPA recently organized and hosted a Human Rights Conference in London where were were joined via global network technology by staff and students in the Dublin and Florence centers as well as our hub, Boston. To prepare for the event, a handful of hard-working, creative and dedicated students volunteered to be involved in a number of ways, from editing footage to create videos, to registering guests, to setting up the room and a break room, to taking photographs on the day.

Below, we've caught up with five students volunteers to find out more about their interest in human rights and what this event meant for them both personally and professionally.

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Rachel Morrell is a social work major from Auburn University.

CAPA WORLD: Why did you decide to volunteer at CAPA’s Human Rights Conference?
RACHEL MORRELL: I decided to volunteer at the human rights conference because as a social work major, I’m typically involved with a lot of vulnerable populations. I like to work with elderly individuals living with dementia as well as their care givers. This was a really great opportunity for me to learn more about individuals who have been falsely imprisoned, which is something that I’m really passionate to know more about.

CW: Has studying abroad given you greater insight into human rights issues? 
RM: I definitely think that studying abroad has helped me understand more about human rights issues in a global context. There is a huge variety of issues here that I’m not used to, coming from a small town of Auburn, Alabama. Being in London is definitely very different. I’ve learned that every issue is different but no issue is more important than another. I think that all populations need equal amounts of help in so many different ways. 

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An Interview with Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs & Peter Pringle

CAPA recently organized and hosted an international Human Rights Conference. On the day, students and staff in London, Dublin, Florence and Boston connected through global network technology to learn from and engage with a group of powerful speakers sharing their personal stories and the importance of their work in human rights from the CAPA London center. 

Among those speakers were Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle. Both were wrongfully convicted of crimes, incarcerated and sentenced to death before - many years later - being released as their sentences were overturned when they were each eventually found innocent. Amazingly, they then found each other - Sunny from Florida and Peter from Ireland, fell in love, got married and founded The Sunny Center in Ireland to help other wrongfully convicted people from around the world as they try to readjust to life on the outside. 

After the conference, we caught up with Sunny and Peter to find out why it was important for them to come to CAPA and share their story, what advice they might give to students who wish to get involved in human rights and what they hope people were able to take away from the event.

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An Interview with Justin Brooks of the California Innocence Project

Justin Brooks, the Director and Founder of the California Innocence Project and a Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California, was one of the main speakers at CAPA's recent Human Rights Conference.

The day long event welcomed powerful speakers to share their stories and their enthusiasm on this important topic with CAPA students and staff in London, Dublin, Florence and Boston through global network technology that allowed participation and engagement across cities.

Justin has practiced as a criminal defense attorney for more than 25 years and has served as counsel on several high profile criminal cases. He has been successful in exonerating many wrongfully convicted clients and has been deeply involved in reforming justice systems in Latin America throughout his career. He has published extensively in the areas of criminal law, clinical education and habeas litigation and is the author of the only legal casebook devoted to the topic of wrongful convictions. Professor Brooks has been recognized several times by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California and, in 2010 and 2012, was awarded the prestigious "Lawyer of the Year" award by California Lawyer Magazine.

We caught up with Justin at the end of the day to ask a few questions about the California Innocence Project, why working in the field of human rights is important to him and a bit of advice for students interested in getting involved.

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Recently, CAPA London hosted a day conference on the topic of human rights, inviting a number of powerful speakers to engage with students and staff on a topic that is at the focus of many of the most pressing global challenges today.

Representatives from two of CAPA internship partners - Stonewall and Womankind Worldwide - spoke on the topics of LGBT rights and woman's rights. We caught up with Claire House from Stonewall and Ellen Patterson from Womankind Worldwide after the event to find out a bit about why this field of work is important to them, how CAPA students might build a career in human rights and what were some of the takeaways from the conference itself.

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Claire House is an International Officer at Stonewall, Britain's leading charity for LGBT equality. She recently completed a PhD in political anthropology, focused on LGBT rights activism in Latin America and has been involved in grassroots LGBT and human rights activism for the best part of a decade in Liverpool, Rio de Janeiro and London. 

CAPA WORLD: Why is being involved with human rights issues important to you?
CLAIRE HOUSE: Working on human rights issues is really important to me because I'm working on something that I love. I find it really important to be working from a humanitarian perspective, to be thinking about all different kinds of people the world over, all different situations that they’re going through. I particularly enjoy the human rights field because you can deal with such a huge diversity of topics, everything from indigenous rights to land rights to women’s rights to LGBT rights. Just that concept of minority rights and how different struggles have so many similarities but so many differences keeps it interesting.

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