Civic Engagement Coordinator
Cynthia Chockalingam currently serves as the Civil Rights Unit Intern and Civic Engagement Coordinator. She is a second-year at the University of Southern California, where she studies International Relations [IR]. She grew up in a family that stood for Tamil rights as the Indian government imposed Hindi, indigenous communities faced castism, and Tamil people in Sri Lanka faced genocide. As this entire community is facing challenges in South Asia, she became passionate about Tamil human rights.
At USC, she is involved in Mock Trial, Agents of Change, and Delta Phi Epsilon [DPE]—a pre-professional IR society. Through Agents of Change, the only civil rights undergraduate clinic in the nation, she was connected with SAN, where she works on SAN’s online presence—through publications and multimedia—and civil rights. In the civil rights unit, she works on the citizenship project where SAN is aiming to put together multiple citizenship clinics to help people with their N-400 naturalization forms and aid in the overall process.
As the Civic Engagement Coordinator, she is working on SAN’s new anti-Asian Hate Project. She is organizing materials to educate the community on what to do in the event that they witness or experience a hate crime, along with organizing events to help educate the community. Her work at SAN has inspired her to continue working with the South Asian community in her future.
