Congratulations to the Winners of the 2019 Catherine Medalia Johannet Prizes
ICLS would like to congratulate the great work of our two Catherine Medalia Johannet Prize winners! Information about the winners, their awards, and their work may be found below.
2019 Catherine Medalia Johannet Senior Thesis Prize
Emma Kenny-Pessia
Not a Genetic Panopticon, but a Genetic Highway: Using a Deleuzian Framework to Illuminate the Paradox of Freedom and Control in the Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing Sector
2019 Catherine Medalia Johannet Internship Award
Alondra Aguilar, CC’21
Alondra will be holding a GlobeMed GROW internship in partnership with Gulu Women’s Economic Development and Globalization in Uganda.
GlobeMed is a national organization that aims to find grassroot health organizations throughout the world to partner with and support through fundraising, education, and awareness. The Columbia University chapter of GlobeMed is partnered with Gulu Women’s Economic Development and Globalization (GWED-G) in Gulu, Uganda, which was founded by women in the community to combat the immense cultural, economic, social and health effects of the war in Northern Uganda. This violent war, in which the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing and torturing civilians in the northern region of Uganda, caused the relocation of millions of Ugandans in the span of nearly three decades. With the Ugandan government unable to suppress the power and force of the LRA, it forced the relocation of civilians into government-run camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). However, people who relocated into these camps, especially women and children, suffered immensely from disease, violence, and poor conditions in these makeshift camp sites. GWED-G was actually started by local women in Gulu, Uganda who were able to return after being displaced and personally experienced the destructive effects of the war on the community. Specifically, GWED-G’s focus is on empowering local women by promoting women’s rights, reproductive health and their welfare through sustainable development programs. These programs range from HIV/AIDs prevention and distributing mama kits for safe baby deliveries to providing livestock as an income source and holding discussions for men on domestic violence awareness. While GWED-G has implemented strong programs that advocate for women’s rights and independence, the grassroots organization genuinely aims to cause social change by supporting all individuals in the surrounding area that suffered from human rights violations during the war. Alondra’s role as a GROW intern, alongside three fellow GROW team members, will be to help implement initiatives in several villages, distribute the resources—such as mama kits—that we collected, and assist in educating the health workers and community members on HIV/AIDs prevention and maternal and newborn health. They will be under the supervision and care of GWED-G founder and director, Pamela Angwech, who will have a chronological outline of our responsibilities and tasks for the entirety of our 5-week internship.
