Sustainability and the Environment: "The Internship"

On Tuesday, the 16th of February, Karen came in all stoked and jazzed because it was the first day that the students were going to be hearing from the folks they'd soon be doing their internships with. A big part of this Sustainability course is the internship that takes place for a month out of the semester. Each student is paired with a local community member who needs assistance executing a project that will help bolster the sustainability of an organisation or establishment, or somehow benefits the community in a positive way with positive environmental impact. To that end, Karen has put together an all-star group of people for the kids to choose from; basically they're all great, like when all the red rangers from the different Power Rangers get together. That makes it kind of tough for the students to choose, so to make sure they make an informed decision, they get to spend a couple days going around and hearing from all the folks about the internships they're offering, which is pretty great.

The first internship the adventurers heard about was the community library internship, hosted by Jannelle Wilkins. Jannelle got the library started here in Monteverde only a few months ago, and they've come a long way already, but there is a lot of work left to be done. The library intern would work with the library's new solar panels to help provide appropriate electricity for the space. The intern would also work with cataloguing withdrawals and organising readings and other events for local children. It seems like a pretty sweet gig, doesn't it?

Here's Jannelle telling the students how she basically built this library with her own two hands (and some help from the community)

After they finished at the library, the adventurers headed back up to the study center to hear a few more presentations about the internships. On their way there, a puppy started following them, so they had to sit down and pet it for a little while. 

Here's Meg telling him that he really shouldn't nip 

After they got over that quick distraction, they headed to the classroom to hear a presentation from Dev Joslin about his nifty internship.

Here's Dev in case you were wondering if you might recognise him from somewhere.

Dev's internship involved working with local experts to put together a series of short, educational nature films, using mostly existing footage, to help to educate the local community about the importance of the habitats around them. A ton of folks in Monteverde make their living off of the forest in one way or another, but some don't realise it; these films would help to educate the public as well as enlighten them to the beauty and significance of the environment. Dev even played a few Quetzal videos to show the students what he was talking about, and that was pretty cool.

During a quick spurt of technical difficulties, Phil Neville started explaining why he gave meat the red card, which was also cool  

When Dev was finished with his cool presentation, the adventurers loaded up into some vans and headed into Monteverde proper, where they visited the Bajo Del Tigre reserve inside the Children's Eternal Rainforest. Here, they would hear a presentation on ecotourism marketing, an internship offered by Hector's awesome wife Evelyn! Evelyn works at Bajo Del Tigre with the Monteverde Conservation League, an organisation designed to help preserve the forest and protect it from threats of development. 

Hector and his daughter watch Evelyn's presentation with great focus 

The internship at Bajo del Tigre would focus on creating promotional material for the reserve. Though a beautiful and massive corridor of forest, Bajo del Tigre does not get nearly as many visitors as the Monteverde Reserve, only a few more minutes down the road. In fact, only 2.3 % of tourists who visit Monteverde visit Bajo del Tigre. This internship would focus on marketing and communication, promoting the reserve to the general public and visiting tourists in order to generate income and spread knowledge. Plus these interns get to be in the woods a little bit, which is also great. 

After the presentation, the adventurers got to walk around Bajo del Tigre just a little bit and get a lay of the land.

Morgan's getting better at spotting the camera

 Emma and Chandler seem thoroughly impressed

Hector and his daughter look like they're posing for promotional material, but they're really just looking at the sky 

 This little lookout-spot reminds me of the everglades

After they finished up at Bajo del Tigre, the adventurers headed off for their next possibility for an internship: a small, family-run sewing and repair shop. Elieth Coto and Humberto Brenes opened this small tailoring start-up, called Punctata, to focus on repairing well-worn articles of clothing and accessories, rather than seeing them thrown into a landfill and replaced with new manufactured items. This is a pretty sweet internship because it offers a personal experience contributing to sustainability and reuse. This intern would work with the Boruca artisan community, who have a unique method of dying thread, and would provide the thread for this small business in Monteverde to use in their repairs and creations. 

It was just a little warm out here 

 Lookit all the pretty colours

 Well the adventurers ate a quick lunch, and then they headed up to their last internship presentation of the day, and it was at the local Monteverde radio station, which was pretty cool. The station was housed in a pretty tiny space, and they were just starting out, but their plans are ambitious and their future looks pretty bright. Mari Wadsworth is the head honcho over here, and you can tell she's pretty passionate about this stuff. 

What a cozy little radio station 

The cool folks running the station are stoked on getting good content to produce, and so they have a position for an intern who can produce a sustainability-related podcast. This lucky student would get to go around the community and interview professionals in the field about methods of operating sustainably, ideas about conservation, and cool things of this nature. The Monteverde radio station is gonna be NPR one day, so it'd be cool to get in on the ground floor. 

See, you can tell that they've got schemes 

After that, Part One of internship day was over. The adventurers had some good ideas and knew that it was going to be hard to choose which of these sweet gigs they wanted to call their own. Of course the radio station had a dog, so that was definitely going to influence some thought, you know?

Stay tuned for Internship Day Part 2: The Revenge of the Internships!