Off-Campus Internships: Ecuador and Puerto Rico

PROVO, Utah – Jan 28, 2019 – Proximity allows social innovators to better understand people who are experiencing a social issue. To further the Ballard Center’s mission of searching for pattern-breaking social innovations around the world, students receive grants to make off-campus internships possible. Most of the grant funding comes from generous donors who believe in the power of travel and face-to-face interaction when solving social problems. Without these grants, many students wouldn’t have the opportunity to travel abroad.

Kaitlin Whiting, a Latin American studies major and International Development minor, played a key role in teaching the 12-step self-reliance program to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Puerto Rico. She and another student from BYU spent the 2018 spring and summer terms teaching the 12-step self-reliance program to local congregation leaders and newly-called self-reliance specialists.

At the time of her internship, Puerto Rico was still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in September 2017. Whiting described the area as suffering from a “brain drain” due to the amount of people who had left the territory. The people left behind were discouraged and frustrated with the lack of resources in Puerto Rico.

“The self-reliance program we taught helped give people more confidence in themselves and their abilities to take care of themselves and their families,” Whiting says. “The program helped people realize that they could get through these challenges and help their family get through it.”

Ana Neilsen, a Latin studies major and Spanish minor, interned in Otavalo, Ecuador, during the 2018 winter semester. She and two other BYU students taught members of the church the same 12-step self-reliance program taught by Whiting, with a focus on helping people find better work. While the program is designed to last a total of twelve weeks, Neilsen and her group piloted teaching the program in one week.

“The people we were working with were in desperate need of work and couldn’t afford to wait twelve weeks,” Neilsen says.

The group that Neilsen was a part of tried different approaches to teaching the information, such as holding three-hour class sessions over the course of one week or teaching the entire course in three days. By the conclusion of their three-month internship, Neilsen’s group taught the self-reliance class a total of ten times.

Aside from the incredible teaching experience, Neilsen appreciated increasing her cultural awareness as well.

“Seeing the culture was something I had never experienced before,” Neilsen says. “I met many indigenous people with strong traditional ways of life. I was able to attend a traditional wedding and a traditional funeral. Teenagers are considered adults starting at age fourteen among the indigenous people. As a Latin studies major, I especially enjoyed observing the differences between Hispanic families who lived in the cities and the traditional indigenous groups in some of the more rural parts of the country.”

When speaking about the grant she received, Neilsen says, “I’m thankful for the grant donors’ contributions and assure them that their donation has helped many people, including myself, to learn how to become more self-reliant and to find better work in order to care for themselves and their families.”

Both Whiting and Neilsen were grateful for the opportunity to participate in the self-reliance services internship and they viewed their experiences as life-changing. They not only taught people in developing countries about self-reliance, but they also learned how to become more self-reliant themselves.

Students interested in an off-campus internship through the Ballard Center can visit https://marriott.byu.edu/ballard/get-involved/internships/off-campus/ for more information.