Social Work’s Molly Heyman Promotes Social Justice at Home and Abroad

By Barbara Jester

    Molly Heyman, a junior in the Silver School of Social Work, returned to campus this fall after a spring and summer spent in Argentina. Her semester abroad, however, was not the usual one: although she was enrolled in the University of Belgrano with the specific goal of immersing herself in the study of the Spanish language as well as the politics and history of South America, she spent much of her time volunteering with LIFE Argentina, an NGO that works in socially excluded neighborhoods with poor children and their families.

     Heyman worked in a soup kitchen in an outlying barrio, or “villa,” of Buenos Aires where she spent much of her time tutoring and playing with children in a place, she says, where people live in cars and still ride donkeys. “This was a subway ride away from where I lived with my host family, in a lovely clean room, with a maid and good food. I felt I was living a double life.” She also spent time in a Peruti village on the northern border of Argentina working with the indigenous Guarani population, against whom there is still much discrimination. “The village did not even have access to clean drinking water until LIFE came and built a well,” she says.

      Instead of returning home when the semester was over, Heyman stayed in Argentina working on a farm with an international community of volunteers digging irrigation ditches, painting, and doing other physical labor in an effort to create an “eco-village”.

      Returning to NYU, Heyman once again threw herself into her work with Oxfam. As president of Oxfam America at NYU, she has organized such functions as fair trade month activities and awareness and a Hunger Banquet in November, which drew over 100 students. Far from believing that the social justice movement has fizzled out at NYU, Heyman points to the banquet and plans for an upcoming concert, “Rhythms of Social Change,” as signs that students are more aware and more committed.

      “We must respond to the needs of those who are marginalized,” she says. “Oxfam gives me a way to do this on an international level.”

      Heyman also serves as an RA at Brittany Residence Hall, a freshman dorm, on an Explorations floor with the theme ACTION, “Art and Social Justice.” With her co-RA from the Tisch School, she is encouraging the floor’s residents to explore “theatre as a dialogue-opener” and attend performances around the city which represent this theme.

      When Heyman graduates, she will either join the Peace Corp or begin work on a master’s degree in social work.