Looking Back/Overall Insight

As I complete the last week of my internship at Unearth the World, I realize that my experiences at UM helped shape my success this summer. When I had first applied for the position, I was interviewed by my boss Kathryn and she was very interested in my research experiences that I had gained through my years as being part of the Global Scholars Program. We had completed research action projects that gave me greater insight on research as well as facilitation, teamwork and leadership. My membership with Kappa Alpha Pi Pre-Law Fraternity was also of great help in giving me a sense of leadership and teamwork. These were important attributes to have for a company that required well documented country guides and a need for more international partners. Me and Kathryn and Mike became a very hard working team and I was told that I contributed greatly to their efforts to grow as  a company and I can only attribute this to my LSA education and all the papers and research I have had to complete. I posted and reviewed blogs on our website every week and my writing skills related to the topics were well informed. My International Studies and Spanish Majors were also great backgrounds related to my work because I had to know a great deal about culture shock and other international travel topics for the blogs and I even was able to speak Spanish with some of our potential future partners in Peru. I was surprised by the voluntourism industry in general because prior to starting my internship I hadn't really known much about it. My first few weeks in I thought it was a wonderful concept to send people to other countries to volunteer but what surprised me was that there were many negatives of this industry as well. I never knew such a good concept could also be so bad but it made it even more essential for us to portray this and to show how our company is different from others that send volunteers without proper training and without sustainability in mind. This can cause irresponsible volunteering and it is something we hope to improve upon. I was able to handle portraying these in our blogs and through researching articles and blogs from people that had gone through such voluntourism trips to further my understanding of what their experiences were like and what they would or could change. Another thing that surprised me was how much more difficult it was to find a volunteer partner in the U.S. It was much easier to find needs to meet in other countries but finding a good partner that provided requirements such as housing and food for the volunteers was extremely difficult. I was able to tackle this by being more creative and thinking of organizations that would need volunteers for a short term trip and that's when I sought to approach places where they needed help in housing, such as New Orleans, and Indian Reservations and these proved to be great partners because they also provided a cultural exchange to the volunteers on the sites. Going through University websites on spring break trips and finding partners at UM and other schools also proved to be helpful in allowing me to find more U.S. partners. Overall, I learned a great deal during this internship and my research and writing experiences I gained through my LSA background were helpful in allowing me to spread the word on voluntourism.