CIEE Sustainability Internship on Carbon Neutrality, by Hailey Brown (University of Colorado-Boulder)

        While studying abroad in Costa Rica through CIEE, I participated in a sustainability internship. This internship was with the Monteverde Friends School and focused on the sustainability challenge of achieving carbon neutrality. The Monteverde Friends School is a private, bilingual Quaker school interested in following core values such as environmental stewardship. As such, they had formed a Carbon Neutrality Committee and are working towards being carbon neutral and being a model for the community in this regard. To make progress towards this goal, the school invited interns to increase environmental education, particularly in relation to carbon neutrality. 

            I decided to be a part of this internship and attempt to tackle the sustainability challenge because environmental education is one of my main interests, both academically and professionally. Most would agree that the world is currently facing drastic environmental changes and degradation; a situation that affects everyone in every part of the world. Many people and organizations throughout the world are trying to rectify the various causes and impacts of these changes but, it cannot be done without better environmental education. For example, it is not possible for a society to make better choices towards climate change if they do not understand it or even believe it exists. Thus, supporting environmental education is something that I believe to be incredibly important.

            During this internship, I collaborated with another student to put together and implement a workshop on carbon neutrality at the Monteverde Friends School. In order to create a successful workshop, we had to first find out what people knew and where the knowledge gaps were through interviews of students, teachers, staff, and parents at the school. Next, we advertised for the workshop by writing an announcement for the parent and staff newsletters and making posters. We ended up getting about 25 people to attend, mostly students with a few teachers. Based on what we learned in the interviews, we focused our presentation on how climate change happens, what people can do in their everyday lives to help, and school projects working towards carbon neutrality. In order to make the workshop more engaging, we created a game about carbon neutrality which helped to keep the attention of students. Later, I created a document with resources about composting successfully and educating students.

Through this internship I gained skills and knowledge in various areas. First, I gained skills related to giving interviews such as what questions to ask and being sensitive to nerves and controversial topics. I also learned how to prepare for and give a successful workshop. Both of these are skills that will be important in my future, as I become more involved in environmental education. In addition, I learned about the carbon neutrality process and how it can be challenging, complicated, and expensive. This brings up questions about how the process can be improved in order to encourage adaptive change. Overall, I accomplished and learned a lot through this internship and cannot wait to pursue more efforts to increase environmental education.