Prep Week

So for the internship prep week, we have been assigned things that are supposed to prepare us for internship at our respective sites. This is all fairly low key for me, because I am already very familiar with my site, what it means to be an intern, what our relationship with our mentor should look like, etc. The task for today is to find out general "background information" about our organization, with an interview with our mentor to follow tomorrow.

I am going to be an intern at The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ). The IPJ is located in the Kroc School of Peace Studies (KSPS) at the University of San Diego. The Institute has several programs running, and the one that I will be involved in is the Worldlink Youth Program. I was also an intern there during the summer of 2009, so that is why all of the things we are going to be doing this week are familiar to me. During summer I was a research intern, which meant I found, read, and summarized articles pertaining to the overall topic of Development with a specific focus on Trade and Financial Systems. For this three week Internship Immersion, I will have more of an Event Planning role. The event is Worldlink's largest function of the year, the Youth Town Meeting (YTM). The YTM, which will be held on January 22, 2010, will host 650+ students from Southern California and Tijuana to meet, learn about, and discuss international issues.

Trying to explain the IPJ to someone who is not familiar with it never ceases to be a challenge, and I think in this blog there is no exception. I think I just threw a few acronyms out there and hoped that it would all make sense. I think the best thing to do to learn about the IPJ or the KSPS would be to visit the website. And using the acronyms does help in the long run :)