This blog was written by our 2020 Interns from The Leadership Center. We are grateful for our partnership with them and all future collaborations. To learn more about their project visit: https://tinyurl.com/TLCHN
Hello, we are Katherine, Dania and Eva. We graduated from The Leadership Center as bilingual in Leadership and Community Development. In our time there we learned that community development is about people, not projects. By thinking in a different way, we know we can help in our communities.
When we learned about Shoulder to Shoulder’s mission and vision, we believed that by doing our internship with the organization we would receive new experiences and develop our knowledge on how to be a teacher and work with
Dania (left), Eva (middle), Katherine (right)
children. After we knew that they had accepted us, we were excited to be in a different place with children and share our experiences with them. In the time that we were planning to start our internship, everything changed. The pandemic came, and we could not start. However, thanks to God we were able to start right before the end of the school year and completed our time with a winter camp.
Throughout the pandemic the experience of teaching has been difficult, and we have faced some challenges. Still, we consider and see that our classes have been active, even if they are virtual or in a classroom. The desire of the students and parents to learn, showed us that everything is possible in these difficult times, no matter the sacrifice. The support that each parent is giving to their children to be successful is one thing that surprised us because students’ education did not stop.
What we wanted was to give our students the opportunity to learn from us through encouragement, by listening to them, making them feel welcome and feel important to us. Also, by sharing our experiences that can help them in the future. Even though times are not easy, we have been motivating them to not give up!
We are thankful with God for the time we had to do our internship with Shoulder to Shoulder, for the opportunity they gave us to share and learn from them. To the teachers for supporting us. To the students for the beautiful times that we shared together, and to the parents for supporting their children. We advise future interns to do things with passion, love, encouragement and to believe in the organization. To put themselves in a child’s mind and enjoy the time while they are doing their internship. We believe Shoulder to Shoulder is a great organization to work with, providing opportunities to develop our communities and help the education.
