EREVI Living & Learning Internships
Our summer internship program works as a training course in international development. Interns develop, organize, and run their own projects with staff and expert support. Our internships are designed individually to allow interns to explore and learn experientially in the area of their personal and professional interests. Interns work with a local partner or team.
These internships are a unique opportunity to get hands-on leadership and project experience in an international context. We recognize that even entry-level jobs require some experience. This internship program provides international and cross-cultural leadership experience. As an intern, you will be involved first-hand in our programs, which emphasize: participatory experiential action research; learning in community, cross-cultural solidarity; preservation of cultural diversity; ecological technologies; and effective results. To learn more about our philosophy, see Our Approach or Learning Philosophy pages.
How It Works
When you arrive, we work with you to identify the immediate status of potential projects, partners, mentors, and ecovillage or urban placements. Before finalizing your work placement, we will talk with you about your learning goals and needs in order to match them with those of a local Senegalese work partner or team and mentors who share your vision. Throughout your internship, we encourage you to reflect on and clarify your project focus in light of your learning experience and your available options.
We also invite you to explore, with Senegalese work partners, ways to reinforce capacities for fruitful collaboration on both sides of the cultural divide, and to design sustainable activities that continue after your departure. The commitment of our international and Senegalese interns lights the fire of exploration that makes projects work. Your dreams become our dreams.
At the end of your internship, EREV Institute personnel play an active role in the community to disseminate the information gained. We work to prepare the continuation of the intern's project after his or her departure. When feasible, we build the intern's project as an independent program capable of seeking funds, or as a self-sustaining business that provides employment for the intern's Senegal partner(s) after his or her departure. If you are interested in staying after the end of your internship, we negotiate the possibility to join the EREV Institute’s staff, so that you can continue to lead or facilitate the activities of your program team.
As a part of the living & learning experience, we require most interns to live with a homestay family during their first three months and to have a local work partner. New interns unfamiliar with Senegal or other African countries cannot participate in local life at the level of proficiency required by our organization without cultural orientation and introduction to sustainable development theory and practices. Providing this support to interns requires as much effort as running a full academic program, which is why we request payment for our summer programs.
We recognize that costs can be expensive, and we provide grant applications to support your internships costs. We also encourage interns to search for project funding independendently, by asking friends and partners to run fundraisers in the United States. We will complete any forms your university may require and provide you with information needed to fill out grant applications.
Because this program is extensive, we suggest you design your internship with us as a directed study for credit at your university. The EREV Institute also issues certificates.
Egalitarian Principles
We offer occasional subsidized internships to foreigners only when no Senegalese applicant is qualified for the job. However, the EREV Institute has a policy of paying Americans and Senegalese on the same salary scale. This leads to rapid turn-over among young Americans coming to gain international experience--working with us as NGO management interns, for example-- since our pay scales are too low to permit them to pay off student loans or save money for graduate school programs. The majority of professionals at the height of their careers typically work with us during vacations from their day jobs.