This summer, USC Law students worked in law firms, government agencies and community service organizations in places as familiar as Los Angeles or as faraway as Romania. Two students working abroad, 2L Stephanie Cirone and 3L Lindsay Toczylowski, have shared their stories with the law school. Stephanie’s story is below. Lindsay’s updates can be found here and here.
2L Stephanie Cirone is a 2007 Sidley Austin LLP/USC Public Interest Law Foundation grant recipient, and the new PILF VP. She spent the summer working in Cape Town, South Africa.
Hello Everyone!
I finish up my time in South Africa soon and I wanted to give everyone a quick update on how things have been going this summer. I am living in Saint James, a tiny beach suburb of Cape Town.
My work here has been focused on non-profit law. I work with small NPOs in the Cape Town area that focus on women’s empowerment, educational programs and AIDS counseling. Essentially, my job consists of making sure that the small NPOs are taking full advantage of the legal opportunities afforded to them under the new democracy.
For example, one of my clients is an American non-profit that has functioned in South Africa for many years. They wish to take advantage of being fully operational in South Africa so I have written them a constitution to establish them as a South African voluntary association. I then completed their application for nonprofit status with the Non-Profit Directorate, and I am guiding them through the process of becoming a Public Benefit Organization under the South African Revenue Services so that they may enjoy tax exemptions and donor deductible status in South Africa. Additionally, I am coordinating with the International Trade Administration Commission to arrange for their status as a nonprofit importer/exporter of goods.
All of the lawyers and government officials that I work with have been friendly, and extremely helpful considering that I am only visiting for a short time and previously had no familiarity with South African law. At the same time, it has been an introductory course in bureaucracy, the realities of the new democracy, and the frustrations inherent in operating small community-based non-profits.
I spent quite a bit of my time so far working with women who are involved with an NPO that teaches them traditional beadwork skills so that they can produce beaded art and dolls at home in the townships to support their families. I attend their AIDS clinic every Friday in Cape Town, and I have often visited their small workshop in Khayelitsha.
Khayelitsha is one of the townships on the outskirts of the city, a mixture of formal and informal settlements where residents live in anything from self-built houses, to ‘Reconstrution and Development Program’ government subsidized housing, to shacks made up of found scraps of building materials like corrugated metal and sticks. These visits have been my chance to be exposed to the home life and culture of Xhosa people, who came to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape to find work in the last 10 to 15 years.
Since I come from such an outside position, I feel like I have been able to peek into very different sides of life here in the Western Cape. As an American I have been safe and welcome in one of the most dangerous townships in all of South Africa, but I also live in a wealthy beachside village. This summer has been a mix of experiences and perspectives that has been very unique to Cape Town, and it has definitely cemented my commitment to continue working in the international legal community.
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