Interesting Internship: Kaitlin O’Meara and Journey’s End Refugee Services

By: Hannah Wiley, Features Editor

This past summer, senior English and Spanish double major Kaitlin O’Meara had an internship in the education department of Journey’s End Refugee Services. O’Meara got the internship through the Canisius English Department and the Thomas Connelly Community Engagement Fellowship. 

She worked with Canisius alum and former opinion editor of The Griffin Newspaper, Grace Brown, who had been working there as the department case manager for two years and is now attending law school. On a daily basis, O’Meara worked alongside Brown to ensure everything ran smoothly. She would also do education orientation which “is how [Journey’s End] got new students into the program. So I would send out all the invitation texts, I'd book the interpreters, sometimes I would run it, or I'd help run it, and then book intakes, which is how we got these students registered for class,” O’Meara said. 

As a refugee organization, Journey’s End Refugee Services offers a wide array of services to many people with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. As a Spanish major, she got to utilize her Spanish a lot with Spanish-speaking clients. Before her internship, O’Meara got the opportunity to get involved with the immigration advocacy scene in Buffalo with Justice for Migrant Families through her SPA 324 class. During that time the class took a trip to the Batavia detention center where she and her classmates had a talk with some of the detainees. 

At the end of the summer, O’Meara also had the opportunity to travel to the Arizona-Mexico border and spend a week working with the Kino Border Initiative. She accompanied migrants on their journey while learning more about the realities of the situation at the southern border. “I really wanted to take an opportunity to learn more about what the situation is really like, especially in the wake of the Trump administration and all of the ways that they've been cutting back on programs and services that aid refugees and immigrants across the country,” O'Meara said. 

Through her internship and trip to the border, O’Meara has discovered that she hopes to work in immigration advocacy post-grad. “After I graduate, I plan on spending a year abroad teaching English, and then I would really like to work in immigration advocacy, or at an organization like Journey’s End. I think the work they do there is very meaningful and impactful, and I want to be able to help people like how I have been able to do during my internship here,” stated O’Meara. 

For more information about her internship or with any questions you may have, email Kaitlin at omeara2@canisius.edu.