The importance of interns at Chaska

Chaska is different. We are a small organisation that is very much focused on breaking boundaries, finding solutions that work and we never stop evolving. 
Interns play a role in this and a very important one.

1. Interns bring new knowledge, ideas, insights, experiences into our project

Thanks to interns we identify, research and add new elements that help us understand our girls better, that allow us to develop better processes to identify their career choices or improve our cooperation with parents. 
Interns are only here for a short period of time but without them, the limits of our staff would be the limits of our project.

An example;  Because of how the educational system works in Peru, our girls have to decide what to study, what career they want, when they are 15 or 16 and helping them with that choice has been a really big challenge for us. 
We were looking at external factors, trying to identify and value them. Until an intern added the option that maybe there’s internal reasons. We were quite sceptical but did add the idea and at a small scale research project we actually found out that most of our girls have internal motivations that are 5 times more important than any other, external influence.

1. Interns are positive role models to our girls

Most of our girls live in a world where everything and everyone is set to continue what exists. They have nobody around them that breaks that circle, that works really hard to get ahead in life. 
Interns embody a better future. The fact that somebody comes from a foreign country to share some time and energy with them while building a decent life for themselves gives a very strong and positive message to our girls.

An example; one of our girls dropped a plate while washing dishes. Initially she froze, expecting that somebody would hit her for breaking a plate because that’s what she was used to at home. When an intern went to her and asked her if she was ok, if she didn’t hurt herself, she started crying, not knowing how to deal with her emotions.

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