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Veronica Clark, owner of the Minneapolis-based boutique D.NOLO, is the 2020 recipient of The Advocates for Human Rights Women's Program Volunteer Award. Clark has been an active volunteer with The Advocates since 2015, advocating on behalf of both racial and gender equality. This month, as Clark was in the midst of re-opening her boutique that had closed in the wake of pandemic, she took time out to virtually correspond with me about her work with The Advocates. I left our conversations inspired by her resilience, hard work, and ability to balance her different roles in the community.

Clark first encountered The Advocates while working on a documentary in Geneva. Since then, she has gone on several trips advocating for human rights. In 2017, Clark travelled with The Advocates to lobby at the United Nations in Geneva. While there, she delivered an oral statement to the Human Rights Council raising awareness on issues of race in the United States - particularly with respect to the crisis of the killing of Black men in the U.S. In addition, Clark traveled to Malta for the WAVE (Women Against Violence Europe) annual meeting where she forged new relationships with women human rights defenders from around the world helping to ensure the protection of women's rights in their respective countries.

In addition to her work at various human rights conferences, Clark also volunteers a substantial part of her time fact finding for The Advocates. She helps them to collect information that will guide their future recommendations and policy changes. She has researched international threats to women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and the safety of human rights defenders. As director of The Advocates' Women's Human Rights Program Rosalyn Park noted, "[f]or each of these projects, Veronica brings tremendous talent to the table: from her keen observation skills where she consistently spots the subtle yet crucial details, to her ability to make everyone she meets feel instantly at ease, to her worldview and multicultural understanding of racial and gender inequality issues."

When I asked Clark what her favorite part about working with The Advocates was, she responded, "feeling like I have a small part in positive change." Veronica, you have had more than just a small impact on international and local human rights matters and your commitment to justice is unparalleled. It is with great pleasure that The Advocates' Women's Rights Program honors you this year with a 2020 Volunteer Award.

By Jenna Schulman, University of Pennsylvania sophomore and active volunteer for The Advocates For Human Rights.