From April to September 2019, the Crest Internship brought three undergraduate students from the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Toronto University, Canada to the Centre for Research and Social Transformation (CREST) in Kerala, India. CREST is a skills training centre for Dalit (former untouchable) and Adivasi (tribal) youth. This year, there were two batches of intern teams. From May to late June, undergraduate student Annika Olsen undertook this internship alongside master’s student Amanda Harvey-Sánchez. From July to late August, Amber (Xinyang) Ye and Tabitha Oni together interned at CREST. Each intern assisted CREST staff by coaching and mentoring trainees individually, and by organizing activities to develop the trainees’ confidence, overcome cultural barriers to communication, and generally make them less shy around westerners. Coming from across Kerala, these trainees navigate daily forms of stigma and social exclusion, despite structural and legal sanctions in place to protect them. Many trainees at CREST express hope to acquire jobs in the private sector—especially in multinational organizations—so that they may use their university degrees and better their livelihoods. During summer 2019, interns from the University of Toronto learned about these students’ experiences as they seek social mobility and participation in India’s dynamic and expanding transnational economy.
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