by Jake Fettig, Country Leader, Indonesia
On the REI homepage you’ll read that “we send long-term staff and short-term professionals” to achieve REI’s mission in emerging countries. In addition to this, here in Indonesia we are privileged to regularly host student intern teams. The goals of these teams are slightly different than our professional teams and their experiences are unlike many other short-term teams that go overseas.
While we still expect that student interns will make a meaningful contribution towards our work here, we have designed the internship to give participants a taste of what doing this kind of work long-term looks and feels like – or, as close of a taste as we realistically can give in a short time. Towards this end, since Amber and I took over leading these teams in 2022 we have exclusively recruited college juniors and seniors who are seriously considering long-term, cross-cultural holistic development work as a vocation.
These recruited students come for a two-month internship and have the opportunity to live among Indonesian people while learning the basics of the local language and culture, engaging in training and education on cultural adaptation and holistic development practice, and working on a challenging project that will meaningfully contribute to REI’s work in Indonesia. Our hope in doing this is to help these students develop a vision for their lives that includes holistic development and aid them in making a decision about whether or not this is something they want to commit to for the long term.
In the summer of 2023, we hosted four excellent students for a student internship, and we are thrilled that two of them – Rebecca Ray and Benjamin Hunt – are returning to Indonesia as REI staff. I recently asked Rebecca how the internship helped her decide to join our staff. She says, “The internship allowed me to see what Indonesian culture is like along with how the REI team is being used holistically here. Being able to experience Indonesia for a few weeks allowed me to better understand what it would be like to live here longer and as the internship progressed, I really could envision a life here and felt excited at the thought of joining the team!”
Benjamin had similar thoughts: “The vision was exactly what I was looking for, to holistically serve through my passion for agriculture and sustainability. Also, over the course of the internship I came to love the Indonesian people.” Upon returning home, Benjamin shared about his experience and love for Indonesian people with his friend Koda Benavidez and recruited him to come to Indonesia as REI staff as well.
Rebecca joined us here in Malang on October 24th and is deep into language study and adapting to her new cultural environment. Benjamin and Koda joined us in the beginning of December, when they will also begin as full-time language students.
Once each of their language abilities have progressed sufficiently, all three of them will be enrolled as graduate students with our local university partner, Brawijaya University. There are a few key advantages to this. First, it gives new staff an excellent context to experience and learn about different facets of Indonesian culture and institutions. Second, it provides unparalleled language practice in their professional content areas. Third, it creates natural relationships for them to build both their personal and professional networks. And fourth, they will meaningfully develop their professional competencies while immersed in the context in which they hope to use those competencies to contribute to REI’s vision and mission.
We could not be more excited about this growth for our team, welcoming three excellent young staff. We are eager to see how their efforts here help build people to build nations.
And when you think of REI’s work around the world, think also of students. Students making an impact as interns, making a life-changing decision to join REI staff, and hopefully continue on as a permanent fixture of our field teams.
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