Blog

Tannis Thorlakson's Summer Experience

Tuesday September 1, 2009

A group of young students gather on the floor around me. Through my translator I ask, “What was your favorite part of your school holiday?”

“Learning about HIV at this camp!” “Talking with our coaches about AIDS,” “Understanding what I can do to not get sick”

I’m in one of the townships outside of Cape Town, South Africa, and we have just finished a Holiday Camp that incorporates our HIV and life skills curriculum with a soccer camp for 14-16 year olds. A jungle of tin shacks surrounds me housing a half a million people living below the poverty line and all these kids can talk about is how fortunate they feel to have been able to learn about HIV during their school break.

I’m stunned. In America you couldn’t pay a kid to sit through a health education session during their school holidays. But here these teenagers were more excited about learning about HIV than receiving a free lunch each day, playing soccer with their peers, or winning new Nike gear. And they got up before sunrise each morning to walk over an hour to get to camp. They all know that AIDS has made their Aunt sick or their best friend’s dad die, but no one will explain to them what it is or how they can avoid becoming infected. For many in South Africa, HIV is a taboo subject that just isn’t discussed, so the chance to have an open discussion with a knowledgeable adult really is the best thing about their school holidays.

I’m working as a summer intern for Grassroot Soccer (GRS), a non-profit that uses the power of soccer in the fight against HIV and AIDS across Southern Africa. So what was my favorite part of my school holiday? Realizing that the work GRS was doing really is making a difference in these kids’ lives.

Internship Experience

Flying to South Africa a day after finals ended I had little time to mull over my expectations of my upcoming summer experience as an intern for Grassroot Soccer. I spent most of the twenty seven hours of traveling catching up on some much needed sleep and arrived in Cape Town wide-eyed and equipped only with the small bit of sage advice my father had given me before I departed. “Tannis, you know what interns do, right? They do all the stuff that no one else wants to do. So get used to it, and don’t forget to smile.”

But had I had time to formulate any expectations of what my summer was going to be like, my experience still would have far exceeded anything I could have hoped for. Yes, I performed mundane tasks like going to the post office, breaking down cardboard boxes and counting and sorting new equipment. But even through the simple tasks around the office, I was still learning a lot. I learned how to convince a business to give a non-profit a discount on office supplies, how to track a budget or put together a simple event planning website.

I got to get involved in some really amazing projects as well, I helped plan and run an event that combined HIV testing, counseling, and education with a youth soccer tournament. We ran a weeklong soccer and HIV education camp and I helped the Monitoring and Evaluation team conduct pre and post-tests and focus groups with the kids to measure the effectiveness of our curriculum. I did a research project on continued education for our coaching staff. I gave a presentation to the office on key scientific findings in the global health field after attending the largest scientific conference on HIV and AIDS in the world. My final project was to plan, organize and manage the training of the 26 new yearlong interns.

At the end of the summer I really felt like I had made a difference at GRS, something that I was concerned wouldn’t happen because of the brevity of my stay. But it didn’t start out like that. At the beginning of the summer I was often left with nothing to do, and when I was asked to do something it was often cutting paper into squares or sorting files. Thinking of my dad’s advice I happily cut paper and sorted files with a smile. Slowly I was given more responsibility and moved from the paper-cutting intern to the logistics-planning intern to the running-of-entire events intern.

But GRS made an even larger impact on me. My work with GRS in the global health realm confirmed my interest in the intersect between the environment, health and international development. Through my involvement with a variety of projects, I learned a lot about my working style and what kind of jobs I could, and could not, enjoy. But most importantly, I learned from the people I worked with. The passion, dedication and care they brought to the mission of GRS truly inspired me to believe that we really can make a difference.