Internships are notorious for being boring. Get coffee, make copies. But at World Concern, our four new interns are going to have an adventure. They might be getting coffee, but it would be in a tin cup inside of a Masai tribal hut in Kenya.
The four World Concern summer communications interns arrived today. They’ve been getting the lowdown on what we do and why we do it. One week from now, they’ll be on their way to Kenya, Bolivia or Bangladesh.
The idea behind the internship is to broaden the scope of who knows about World Concern and what we do. We also want new audiences to see why it is so important to reach out to these remote communities. They’ll learn about the lives of people who might work an 11-hour day of hard labor, all for a couple of dollars. They may meet children at risk of being forced into prostitution. They’ll probably meet people living with AIDS – and the friends and family members who are willing to work with us and raise awareness, or even take in children who have lost their parents because of the virus.
Our interns will be writing blog entries about what they see – and it will be from their perspective as a young Westerner who is part of the social networking generation. They’ll also take photos to help show the reality. We’ve also planned out how they will use their experiences to write for local newspapers, aiming to each get published in a mainstream media outlet during their time abroad.
The internet connections will be sketchy, but workable, I am sure. I’ve traveled to eight countries so far with World Concern and always found an internet connection, at least every couple of days. In the next week, I’ll introduce you to the crew – and we’ll all enjoy seeing things from their perspective this summer.