By Tamara Jay
My work experience at René Cassin was both informative and engaging, giving me a genuine grounding in human rights issues, a range of transferable skills, and a real sense of what it means to work at a charity. I really enjoyed meeting the team and learning about all the wonderful work that this organisation does on a daily basis.
Over my two weeks, I attended a range of meetings, from internal team meetings to coalition meetings with other charities working on specific issues, such as one focused on immigration. The team meetings gave me a clear picture of how René Cassin operates day to day. I was included in these discussions throughout, and the work I presented felt genuinely valued and appreciated. The coalition meetings showed me how a single charity can work within a wider web of organisations, all striving towards the same goal of having an impact on human rights issues.
I was given a range of different tasks over the two weeks, each reflecting a different part of René Cassin’s work. Some of the tasks allowed me to develop my research skills. I looked into safe route schemes offered to Uyghurs, alongside past safe route schemes run by the UK, and created a briefing document for a safe route scheme for Uyghurs to come to the UK. I received support in making this concise and relevant. Alongside this, I carried out background research to support a submission opposing the expansion of an Immigration Removal Centre. Both tasks improved my ability to present data clearly and concisely and taught me a great deal about the UK’s refugee and asylum process and the urgent need for safe routes to allow people to safely escape danger and persecution.
This research inspired a personal project of my own, looking at the specific experiences of refugee women in the UK and the intersection of their refugee status and gender. Gender-specific trauma means that many refugee women face a greater need for both mental and physical healthcare than their male counterparts. This project was an opportunity to work independently on something that I really care about, while still receiving support and supervision to keep me on track and guide me to contribute towards the charity’s work.
I was also given the opportunity to complete creative tasks, including designing a social media campaign and developing sessions for youth groups to deliver to their chanichim at summer camps. The social media campaign was a visual presentation of the idea that British values and Jewish values converge on human rights. I learnt to think carefully about the different audiences on social media and how to impart the message to someone scrolling past in seconds, while providing more information for those who want to learn more. I created the sessions for youth groups at the end of my two weeks. This allowed me to take all the knowledge I had learnt and pick out the key pieces of information and communicate them simply and clearly. This exercise, as well as being enjoyable, consolidated what I had learnt over my two weeks.
As well as completing tasks and taking part in meetings, I attended Parliament twice during my two weeks: a justice committee meeting in the first week, and the second reading of the new Immigration and Asylum Bill in the second. It was a new experience for me, and it was amazing to see first-hand how committees work and how much deliberation takes place in order for new bills to be passed. Watching the same issues I had spent the fortnight researching being debated by MPs highlighted to me how relevant and urgent the work I had been doing really was.
It was an honour to take part in René Cassin’s work experience programme, and the care that went into building such a detailed, varied work plan for me was evident from the very first day. I felt a real sense of purpose throughout, and that, as well as learning how the charity worked, I was genuinely contributing to their work. I have learnt the importance of campaigning for what you care about, and the impact that charities can have, especially when working in coalition with others. I have also learnt a lot about the Jewish values and history that have shaped the human rights framework that we rely on today, and I feel grateful to have spent two weeks with a charity carrying forward that legacy to help others in need.
