“Despacito! Play Despacito!” Repeats from around the 15-passenger van as ten 8-14 year old refugee youth call out for my fellow intern Wendy and I to play the smash hit from Louis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber. “It’s the radio” we say with a laugh, “we can’t control what comes on, but if you wait long enough it will probably come back on again”. And thus begins, and usually ends, the day at Heartland Alliance’s Youth and Family Service’s Summer Program. Being an intern in Summer Program has provided me with a great experience to work with some incredible young people, and has been a thoroughly rewarding experience. First, a little about what Summer Program exactly is. Every day of the week in Summer Program takes us to a different location and provides a unique experience, all of which generally center around our program theme of “Good Neighbor”. Mondays, […]

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already my last week at Heartland and in the Chicago area. I’m purposely refraining from reading my first blog post so that I can read both side by side and see how much I’ve grown. Because yes, I truly feel like I’ve grown. I remembered being intimidated and even a little terrified my first few weeks: there were so many heavy tasks I was thrown into with little to no instruction, so many language and culture barriers, so many weights I didn’t feel strong enough not to get crushed under. But now, I feel completely transformed. I’m proud to say that I’ve developed the skill of communicating effectively with non-English speakers to a level in which I consider it one of my strengths. I feel comfortable coming into the office each day instead of a little apprehensive. Both the newer interns and the refugees come […]

One of the most exciting things about moving Chicago is being able to say that I live in Illinois!  It may only be temporary, but for someone who has spent the last 18 years of her life living in Valparaiso, IN (minus a semester in Costa Rica), spending two months in the big city is a pretty big deal.  One of my favorite parts about living in the city is listening to people speak in their many native tongues.  When I’m at the train station, I can hear a pair of students conversing in Arabic.  While I’m walking through Millennium Park, I can understand the parents talking to their children in Spanish.  When I walk down the street, I recognize one of the very few German words I know as a man talks on the phone.  During the time I spent at my internship over the last two months, I […]

I’ve been working at Water to Thrive for over a month now, and the time has flown by. My main project is a marketing plan that W2T can use to reach out to their Christian audience. Although W2T is a faith-based organization with roots in a Lutheran church, they don’t currently have any marketing strategies to reach one of their biggest donor bases – churches. That’s where I come in. Like with any project I’ve done for school, I started with research. This included looking up Christian publications, nearby churches, and best practices for nonprofit marketing. I also needed to know everything I could about Water to Thrive, an organization I had never heard of before I worked here. I also had to go through all their currently marketing, especially social media and print collateral to see how I could tweak it to appeal to a Christian audience. My favorite […]

The train hums me awake in the morning as it zooms under my window each day. It used to be something that jolted me awake, but now it is a part of my morning routine. In the always moving city, I have become used to the sounds, crowds, and lights. Each day as I head to work with my backpack, work shoes in hand, tennis shoes on, I am constantly surprised that in one of the largest cities, how many people I repeatably see each day, on the train and on the street.   The pace in the office of Ingenuity, like the city, is fast. Printers are printing. Meetings are in session. People are talking. I have worked at Ingenuity, the leading arts non-profit that works with getting quality arts education into every Chicago Public School for every student, for about four weeks now, as the Partnerships and Professional […]

Whenever a teacher or professor announced, “for this assignment, you’ll be working in groups,” I would internally (or at times, externally) groan and lament the impending onslaught of scheduling via 600 emails, navigating group dynamics, and inevitably picking up others’ slack. As an English major, I much preferred writing essays on my own time, in my own way, and with my own quality of work standards. However, my internship with Ingenuity this summer has turned group work on its head for me. I am part of the Data and Research team, and our projects are way too big for one person to tackle on their own. Even though we are only a team of three, we bring professional contractors, advisory panel members, and art education stakeholders to join in on our work. Our giant projects all of the sudden feel manageable as everyone in the room brings valuable insight and […]

  Greetings! My name is Katie Karstensen and this summer I have the opportunity to be working with ICDI, or the Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants. When people ask where ICDI is located it’s hard to give one central location because we are all over the Chicagoland area, and even outside of the state of Illinois in some of our ministries and work. To share what it has been like so far interning with ICDI and talking about all the different ministries we do, I thought it would be easiest to take you through my week and share some of the stories I have encountered. Mondays On Mondays you will find me near the South West suburbs of Chicago at our main office where our executive director, the two Sisters who have founded this organization, the fundraising team, and volunteers have their offices. I have done various tasks such as pull staples […]