Social Work Personal Statement

I chose to attend Clark while on my gap-year in Ecuador because I was drawn to the International Development and Social Change major. Since an early age I knew I wanted to work with women and girls in terms of empowerment, but I never really understood what I wanted that work to actually be. While abroad I worked in two different community based organizations and one of my jobs was to teach small sex education workshops to groups of teenagers around my age. I continued to do sexual education through Choices, Clark's peer-run sexual health resource center. I began to understand how important working in the sexuality field was for me and I decided to run for a position on the Executive Board. I was elected and will be going into my third year

Through courses, such as, Sex and Global City, Beyond Victims and Guardian Angels, Sex and Development and National Imagination, I began to see the various ways our communities and countries are shaped by hegemonic ideas of sexuality and gender. I am entranced by the idea of altering the way we as interact with sex, sexuality and gender, as a way to create a more equitable society. My studies in the Women's and Gender studies program provided me with the tool of feminist analysis, which taught me to examine power and the way that all oppression is connected. Understanding how economic, racial, gender, and sexuality-based oppressions operate in tandem with one another is one of the most important lessons I learned at Clark. My academic foundation in International Development and Social Change and Women's and Gender Studies lead to me to focus on the importance of radical change on small scales. Through my studies I hope to confront international issues on community levels, because I believe that no change can occur without first confronting the change that needs to transpire within ourselves. In my opinion, possessing a Master's Degree in Community Development and Planning will provide me with the tools necessary to combat such problems in effective and sustainable

The process of being a sex educator takes around five years and is therefore my short-term professional goal. My long-term professional goal is to open and operate a community youth center in New York that focuses on the needs of LGBTQ youth in urban settings. While there are many centers that work with queer adult populations or work in sexual health there is very little support for the under twenty-one queer population; particularly support that does not target them as solely an at risk demographic. Moreover, many queer focused groups use sex and "partying" as the method to foster community. My education at Clark taught me that the Sexualization of youth as a technique for social acceptance is both dangerous and detrimental because of the strict sexual and gender based performance it forces people to partake