Some Details

Here are just some details from a different thing I wrote up on Sunday

Sunday, January 24, 2010  2:10 PM

The news has been broken and now it’s official.  I’ve gotten that internship that I’ve been in pursuit of for what seems like an eternity.  I didn’t jinx it by sharing many details earlier but I guess now’s the time to spill what I’ve held back.  I’ll be heading to Arusha, Tanzania next term to intern for an organization called Elimu Community Light Children’s Unit (or ECOLICU as I’ll probably be referring to it from this point forward).  I got the internship through IE3 Global Internships which operates within the Oregon University System and allows college students from Oregon, Idaho, and Washington to do these international internships for up to 12 credits for a minimum of 10 weeks (I think) of working at the internship site.  I guess they went through this other organization called Visions in Action to set this specific internship up so you can check out their websites to learn more:

http://www.ecolicu-tz.org/

http://www.visionsinaction.org/

http://ie3global.ous.edu/

I’ve read every word on the ECOLICU website and I’m actually really excited to have this opportunity to work with them.  It sounds like they do some pretty ambitious things there that actually align with a lot of things I really believe in and support.  They’re working closely with vulnerable populations which is important and can make a big difference.  It’s definitely something I’ve considered going into before and may consider getting back into once I really start getting involved.  Just reading their descriptions of what they do, what their goals are, etc. really seems to line up a lot with what I want to do and I wrote this a lot in my application that I really can’t think of a more perfect fit for an internship for me.  I’ve got pretty high hopes and now that this has been officially confirmed, the next step has gotten a lot less mysterious.  I know these changes are going to come, but there are definitely still some unknowns.

I don’t know my living situation yet; whether it will be with a home stay or independently in an apartment or something else.  The Visions in Action website sounds like they do these sort of group living situations where they have a bunch of different international volunteers living together which would be pretty cool though I was kind of hoping for a Tanzanian home stay to try that experience.  I’ll adapt with whatever comes my way, that’s for sure and at this point and 10 weeks doesn’t seem nearly as long as it used to.  In fact it seems a little short, but I don’t even know for sure how long this thing will last or when the start/end dates are.  These are still being figured out but this will dictate what my inter-semester break looks like coming up here real soon as far as when I need to get started.  Additionally, I haven’t really even been told what type of work I’ll be doing with this group.  I tried to use my nonprofit minor to get me involved with some NGO or nonprofit here so maybe they want me to do that sort of stuff but I have no idea what my duties will entail.  As much as I look forward to finding out what this will be, it’s a little difficult to describe to people what I’m going to be doing when I don’t know what it is.