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Video Closed Captions

[music]

Rahul Subramaniam:
It helped me appreciate how connected this world is.
It's a cliche to say that, but it's

Rahul Subramaniam:
absolutely true.

Alison Boden:
I do a trip once every year right before the school year starts to
look at religion, human

Alison Boden:
rights and social change, and I really am hoping that the students
who come will find

Alison Boden:
themselves really dislocated.

Krystal Valentin:
Because I had such a phenomenal experience last year, I decided
to apply again. In Honduras,

Krystal Valentin:
particularly, I thought it was interesting to see the different
social movements and

Krystal Valentin:
how young people and women, are very vocal and very focal in these
kind of struggles.

Alison Boden:
In Managua, we went to visit the dump for the city. And we were
there with a woman who

Alison Boden:
for a while made her living off the dump and lived in it. And we
got to know about the

Alison Boden:
hundreds and hundreds of people who still do that. She told us her
story about rubbing

Alison Boden:
leaves on the rotting food that she would find there, and the leaves
would make the food

Alison Boden:
taste a little less putrid to herself and her children.

Rahul Subramaniam:
We also spoke with bananeros, the ex-banana workers, plantation workers.
They have a permanent

Rahul Subramaniam:
protest outside the government building in Managua. They're protesting
the use of Nemagon,

Rahul Subramaniam:
some of the fruit companies and chemical companies promoted the use of this chemical that led

Rahul Subramaniam:
to cancers and respiratory and digestive disorders.

Krystal Valentin:
We did homestays in Nicaragua, a rural community in Ramon Garcia.
And my homestay mother she

Krystal Valentin:
was just very warm, very loving. And just talk about day-to-day
activities and help

Krystal Valentin:
her out with making tortillas or doing little things around the house.

Alison Boden:
It's a way of internationalizing your education that's really unique.
Even if you go to another

Alison Boden:
country for a year, there's something about two-week immersion on
such a grassroots level.

Alison Boden:
And particularly with an organization that has the trust of the people
that we talk to,

Alison Boden:
and so they are very, very candid with us.

Rahul Subramaniam:
What we work on in our laboratories, the laws that we pass in Washington,
the decisions

Rahul Subramaniam:
made by corporations, what we negotiate in WTO rounds, what we influence the International

Rahul Subramaniam:
Monetary Fund to do, the policies that it advocates, all these have
tremendous impact

Rahul Subramaniam:
on everyday lives across the world. And I think I'd like to use the
remainder of my

Rahul Subramaniam:
Princeton career and even beyond, to understanding the mechanisms more
concretely, so that I

Rahul Subramaniam:
probably know where to apply some pressure and leverage and hopefully
incite some positive change.