Taylor Brewer has dedicated herself to advocacy and giving back to her community. As part of the Oxfam Club at Loyola Marymount University, she found a community dedicated to social change.
Brewer learned about Oxfam, an international confederation focused on alleviating global poverty, after becoming involved with LMU’s Center for Service and Action. She now serves as the president of the Oxfam Club on campus.
Earlier this year, Brewer hosted Oxfam CHANGE Initiative student leaders from across the region, sharing her experiences from being involved in the club. She also advised her fellow student leaders on how they can take action to help the cause of global poverty and collected signatures for Oxfam’s refugee petition.
In this My LMU EXP profile, Brewer reflects on her time in LMU’s Oxfam Club.
Taylor Brewer ’18
Major: Sociology
Hometown: La Habra, California
There is a quote I have said at the annual LMU Oxfam Hunger Banquet, which I have had the honor of hosting for the past three years.
“You may think hunger is about too many people and too little food. That is not the case. Our rich and bountiful planet produces enough food to feed every woman, man, and child on earth. Hunger is about power. Its roots lie in inequalities in access to education and resources. The results are illiteracy, poverty, war, and the inability of families to grow or buy food.”
Before coming to LMU, I would not have believed the intense effect this line would have on me, but it shapes the work I do.
I grew up entrenched in charity work — volunteering every summer alongside my mother and sister for hours on end. Despite my experience when it came to helping others, not once in all those years did I wonder why the charity work I performed was necessary. I chose LMU because of the Jesuit mission of the education of the whole person. Little did I know how much this would truly shape the woman I have become.
At the end of my first year at LMU, I was thrust into social justice work — beginning with the wonderful mentoring of Tom King in the Center for Service and Action. Tom informed me of an opportunity to change the LMU community as a Oxfam CHANGE Leader and then CSA introduced me to Fair Trade Advocacy. By the end of my freshman year, I became the Fair Trade Campaigns advocate for LMU and the vice president of the Oxfam Club.
My passion for fair trade, as well as in my sociology classes, brought social injustice and food insecurity to my attention. As a junior, I held the top position for the Oxfam Club and was involved in Oxfam’s CHANGE Initiative. Through this program, I began to value the the innate volunteerism on our campus. In Oxfam Club, we see real solutions take shape through advocacy, education and sustainable action. As a club, we want to make room for students to have conversations about the injustices in our world so we can find foster hope and find sustainable solutions.
LMU’s mission of educating the whole person and its commitment to service and justice help form the global citizenship that has guided me through lessons of my faith and my understanding of what it means to be a woman with and for others, especially through its application in my work. I now look toward law school with a passionate focus on public interest law so that I can further search for and create the long-lasting change that I have advocated for here on the bluff.