帮助他人

就像她的兄弟们, 她在高中时学了德语——这是一个幸运的决定, as it eventually led her to Michael Resler’s German Studies classroom during her freshman year at 电子游戏软件. Resler encouraged Blodgett to apply for a Fulbright scholarship—“He changed the trajectory of my life,”她说。—which allowed her to spend a year after graduation living in the Austrian Alps, teaching English 和 taking international 和 human rights law classes at the University of Innsbruck. She subsequently volunteered at a refugee center in South Africa 和 then set out to become a lawyer dedicated to 女性’s 和 immigrants’ rights. “I’ve always had this sense that there is injustice in the world 和 that there’s a better way of doing things, 如果我们团结起来, 我们可以算出来,”她说。. “极度乐观和充满希望——这就是我的心态.” 

Blodgett continued to work in the field while attending Harvard Law School. 她在联合国作证, conducted legal research in Casablanca on discrimination against 女性, 和 traveled to Tanzania to study the rights of 女性 entrepreneurs. 2016年从法学院毕业后, 她在安全通道项目找到了一份工作, 在纽约, which provides pro bono lawyers to children who are facing deportation. “I was really drawn to that mission 和 drawn to the fact that they were a small startup,布洛杰特说. “Within weeks of starting there, I was already in court on my own.在这家非营利组织工作期间，布洛杰特还参与创立了 拉斯维加斯蝴蝶百合 (“The Butterflies”), a girls’ empowerment group for her teen clients. “I started to see the power of community 和 also the need for a holistic response for this population, 而不是只关注法律方面,”她说。. “他们有各种各样的需求，就像我们人类一样.”

A plan began to form in her mind: What if she could create an organization that supported young immigrant 女性 legally, 社会, 和 在情感上? Blodgett remembers going to a 女性’s storytelling event one night in mid-2018, 和 then leaving partway through the show to buy supplies 和 create a vision board for what would become The Brave House. 然后，她电子游戏正规平台了如何创办一家非营利组织, 向其他执行董事和创始人寻求建议, 并于2018年秋季正式成立. 她30岁生日, 2019年2月, Blodgett put up a Facebook post asking friends to donate $30 到勇敢之家. 她筹集了50多美元,000, 和 the next month secured free office space in Lower Manhattan through the Urban Justice Center’s incubator program (she’s since moved the office to Brooklyn). She left the Safe Passage Project 和 shifted 到勇敢之家 full-time that spring.

三年, 布洛杰特可能是执行董事, 管理三名员工, 七个实习生, 还有几十个志愿者, but she continues to spend a lot of her time in immigration court. Her day’s tasks at The Brave House can also include coordinating résumé-writing classes, 帮一个变性人客户改名字, 或者为会员安排紧急住房. She also meets monthly with The Brave House’s Youth Leadership Board, 它为非营利组织的项目提供反馈. 以换取他们的服务, 董事会的七名成员，包括温特, 来自牙买加的护理系学生获得了津贴, plus training in public speaking 和 other leadership skills. “很明显，我们需要领导层发出更多样化的声音, 其中包括移民, 有色人种, LGTBQ人, 女性,布洛杰特说. “How can we help young 女性 today so they can be leaders tomorrow?”

Blodgett acknowledges that it can be hard to witness the pain of the people who join The Brave House, 但她也见证了另一件事. “人们经常谈论间接创伤, 这是真的, especially when you’re working with survivors—no one should go through the kind of unimaginable pain that a lot of our members have gone through,”她说。. “但我喜欢考虑替代弹性. The resilience I see modeled around me every day is part of what helps me continue to show up 和 be brave, 去做勇敢的事情.”