Addison Cross Rotary Foundation Scholar on 16 November

Addison Cross is a Rotary Foundation Scholar from Minnesota, USA, sponsored here by the St Andrews Rotary Club to study for a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology. On 16 November, she was invited to tell her story to the St Andrews Rotary Club. With her family background in the military, Addy (as she is known to her friends and family) planned to use her skills to serve in other ways, helped by the support she has from her Rotary membership. Addy’s mother had also inspired her by being herself a Rotary Exchange Student in South Africa in 1990.  In 2015/16, after leaving High school, Addy became a Rotary Exchange Student in Spain where she became fluent in Spanish. Later, while at University studying International Relations, Addy worked with an NGO, Action for Human Rights, helping Spanish-speaking asylum seekers to apply for citizenship in America. This included San Salvadorean women and children fleeing from domestic violence. While in Spain Addy had learned about the US State Department and US diplomacy, which decided her to work in the field of Diplomacy. Addy then undertook an internship in San Salvador. Once she had graduated with a Master’s Degree in International Relations, Addy returned for a second time to San Salvador on a Fulbright Research Grant to understand the experience of those migrants who had been returned or deported by the US during the Covid pandemic. She was mostly with an NGO supported by the US, acquiring a different, more critical perspective about policy, especially about views on migration. This led to a published paper on the experience of violence against women, and how that affected migration. US aid money, Addy concluded, should be directed more intentionally to policies that stop the need at source to becoming displaced, either internally or internationally.