Continuing with my intervention of asking international student artists if they’d be interested in contributing works for Inter.work’s purpose of selling art in exchange for donations to a charity, I’ve received quite positive feedback. ISs seem to be interested in sharing their works and they think donations are a good alternative to not being able to directly receive profits, although not all perfect since ISs would much prefer to receive the profits to support themselves.
A challenge I’ve encountered with the donation system is that ISs not always know a charity, and sometimes don’t have a specific cause they wish to support. This made me realize that there is an opportunity for informing others about non-profits so that ISs who don’t know many charities can discover a cause they’re passionate about through Inter.work.
As I begin thinking about ways to start the campaign to promote self-employment to become allowed for ISs, I saw an opportunity when the Latinxs Collective society opened committee positions for election. I thought that having a committee position would not only be a great opportunity to meet other Latinxs and be more involved in the community, but would also provide a potentially bigger platform to spread the word about freelancing rights for ISs. When nominating myself for a committee position, I was asked to write a manifesto, and “promoting the expansion of freelancing rights for international students” is one of my main goals in it. Election results come out on the 8th of June, and I hope that the freelancing rights for ISs platform connects with other Latinxs to hopefully seek such goal together!