Open Society and Soros Foundation
about usinitiativesgrants and scholarshipsresource centernewsroom
Search

Stay informed with periodic news and announcements from OSI-Baltimore.


donate
share  print  print
Baltimore Community Fellowships

Guidelines  |  Fellows  |  Fellows Profiles

Fellows Profiles
Irene Muñiz
Baltimore, Maryland
2007

Irene Muñiz, 24, grew up in the border town of El Paso. While at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, she ran the student chapter of Amnesty International and worked to bring visibility to human right issues, specifically around the murders and abductions of hundreds of women who worked in maquiladoras—factories owned by U.S companies—in Juarez.

But it wasn’t until Muñiz moved to Baltimore to earn a master’s degree in social work at the University of Maryland that she really began thinking about factors that separated communities from each other. "Coming here, I was taken aback by divisions between communities of color," she says. With a background in community organizing and social action, Muñiz hopes to create a safe space where people can share their stories about racism in order to work together to bring about social change. She believes this will help heal and bring change within individuals and communities.

Spurred also by the divisive national immigration debate, Muñiz plans to use her fellowship to bring together low-wage workers of diverse backgrounds and facilitate a conversation across cultural differences toward improved working conditions and economic stability for all low-wage workers. She is planning cross-cultural, anti-racism and leadership trainings for workers in Baltimore. She envisions organizing workers who use CASA of Maryland’s Worker Center on policy issues affecting low-wage workers and hopes to make the center more inclusive to all communities. "We live in a world that continues to divide us and only focuses on our differences," Muñiz says. "We need to move toward uniting communities of color and establishing a sense of solidarity with one another."

back to the top of the page

About Us  |  Initiatives  |  Grants, Scholarships & Fellowships  |  Resource Center  |  Newsroom  |  Site Map  |  About this Site  |  Contact


Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative License.
©2008 Open Society Institute. Some rights reserved.

400 West 59th Street  |  New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.  |  Tel 1-212-548-0600

OSI-New York, OSI-Budapest, OSF-London, OSI-Paris and OSI-Brussels are separate organizations that operate independently
yet cooperate informally with each other. This website, a joint presentation, is intended to promote each organization’s interests.