Internship: Retreat

Korrin B.

June 25, 2010 - 2:00 PM

Last Friday, all of the interns got to leave work around lunchtime and drive to Buckhead, about thirty minutes from where we are working in Atlanta. The Carter Center arranged for all of us to stay the night at a hotel there for our intern retreat. It turned out to be a very nice night where I got the opportunity to get to know my fellow interns much more and also learn some more about The Carter Center.

We started off by doing quite a bit of mingling while we waited for everyone to arrive. Part of this included a Bingo game in which we had to mingle and ask certain questions of people in order to cross off a square on our game boards. I was quite impressed with some of the things I learned about the other interns. It is a truly impressive group of people. One intern speaks six languages!

Next, we moved into one of our conference rooms for some more organized team building activities and games. These were fun, although I picked the wrong outfit for the game in which we had to repeatedly sit and stand and run! After this, it was on to our speakers.

Our first speaker was the Assistant Director for the Health Programs of The Carter Center. The Carter Center focuses its health work on six different neglected tropical diseases. These diseases include the following: Guinea Worm, Trachoma, River Blindness, Lymphatic Filariasis, Schistosomiasis, and Malaria. Our speaker told us a little about each disease and what The Carter Center was doing to better the situation. All of the diseases are present in African countries where The Carter Center is doing work and some are also present in Latin America. She talked about the difference between controlling a disease, eliminating a disease, and eradicating one. Currently, The Carter Center is working to eradicate Guinea Worm. It has already reduced the number of Guinea Worm cases by 99% since it began its work. The final cases are in Southern Sudan and it is expected to become the second disease eradicated from the world by the end of next year. A video on The Carter Center's work with Guinea Worm can be found here: http://cartercenter.org/news/publications/health/guinea_worm_publications/kristof-052110.html.

Our next speaker was the vice president of the Peace Programs. It was really interesting getting to talk with him because he shared a lot about his personal experience and how he got into the position he is in. He has done quite a bit of traveling and it was really interesting to hear his stories about this. A good portion of his talk was devoted to answering interns' questions and he was very open to the variety of questions that were presented. It was a very informative and useful talk.

Our next event was to have dinner with some of The Carter Center staff. This was a nice, more informal way to get to know some of the people who have been at The Carter Center for a while. After dinner, they joined us for a question and answer session. They came from a variety of departments, so we learned quite a bit from them. To my surprise, many interns had questions about development work, so I got the chance to learn a lot more about the position I am in. We ended the night with free time getting to know each other.

The next morning, we had one more speaker. She was the senior associate director of health development and spoke to us about fundraising. She managed to make a sometimes dry topic interesting by engaging us in an activity. Two interns were chosen to be the faces of two different nonprofit organizations. They were given sheets with information about them. The rest of the interns were funders looking for a place to donate our money. The two interns had to give us a five-minute pitch on why we should donate to them and then the "funders" got to ask a few questions and then take a vote on which organization they would give to. Afterwards, we discussed why we had chosen which organization.

After our speaker, we did a few more teambuilding activities and then headed back home. It was overall a great event to get to know each other. It was especially good for me since I don't work in the same building that a majority of the interns do, so I got to meet some new faces.