Student Intern Fuses Academics with Real-World Experience

When Olivia Schultz was looking for an internship opportunity that would complement her international development studies at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ont., she had one main objective: to work in the head office of a Christian development organization.

Her internship with World Renew not only fulfilled that aim but also brought together her interests, experience, learning opportunities, and a way to contribute valuable research to World Renew.

Schultz’s internship focused on the role and impact of gender in international development. “I have a huge interest in gender analysis and gender development, so being able to work with World Renew’s gender working group was a dream for me!” she said.

World Renew is the disaster response and poverty alleviation ministry of the Christian Reformed Church. For many years, it has had an organization-wide commitment to “gender mainstreaming.” This means the organization is intentional about assessing the different implications for women and men in all of their planned activities, policies, and programs.

World Renew’s gender working group includes representatives from its various home office and regional teams. Together, these representatives assist the organization in living out this commitment.

Schultz volunteered with World Renew as a gender working group and communications intern. Her responsibilities included writing and publishing articles about gender equality work being done through World Renew programs in Bangladesh, Senegal, and Nigeria.

In addition, a large part of her work involved creating a best-practices document about how 10 other international agencies incorporate gender into development. The report she created was then used by World Renew’s gender working group to discuss how to bring some of these ideas and techniques into the work of World Renew.

“Doing this internship with World Renew was very helpful for me,” said Schultz. “It affirmed my love for gender analysis in development. Additionally, it was really great to learn that World Renew's policies on the emphasis of gender were founded in Christ's love for both men and women” as well as for people who are poor, marginalized, fatherless, and so on.

World Renew partners with academic institutions in the United States and Canada to facilitate internships for students such as Schultz, shaping the experiences to meet the learning goals of the students and the criteria of their academic programs.

Students can work in a home office setting to learn about disaster response, fundraising, project management, or refugee support. They can also serve overseas in areas such as environmental stewardship, food security, agriculture, health, and micro-enterprise.

Schultz chose to focus her internship in World Renew’s Canadian home office in Burlington, Ont. “I have done a fair amount of development work abroad, and I had an idea what that was like,” she explained, “but I did not know what the day-to-day [work] at an international development office was like.”

Robert Joustra, assistant professor of international studies at Redeemer, was enthusiastic about Schultz’s achievements in the internship. The goals of the internship program, he said, are to open up vocational opportunities and networks to students, giving them an opportunity to practice their passions in an applied setting and to put the skills learned in university to work.

Following their internships, students “come back from the field and use those same skills to critically research a major topic or issue they worked on, showing the feedback between the intellectual and professional worlds,” Joustra said.

“Olivia . . . came in with passion, World Renew honed and challenged her to apply that passion, and then she put her university skills to work, producing a final research project which actually provides real value to her host organization.”

Vanessa Mathews-Hanna, program manager for International Disaster Response at World Renew, agreed. “Olivia did a thorough review of recent practices in gender equality programming. She put together a literature review which was a helpful tool for both the gender working group and the field staff, who could then research further into the highlighted resources and tools. . . . We were grateful for her assistance to the gender working group.”

Ida Kaastra Mutoigo, director of World Renew in Canada, was also pleased with Schultz’s internship. She noted that one of the reasons World Renew strives to offer internship opportunities like these is a hope that students will come to realize and appreciate how the church is actively working in social justice through agencies like World Renew.

“The church is a vital institution in community development” overseas as well as in Canada and the United States, said Mutoigo, “because it is one of the lasting organizations that is part of the community long after independent, international Christian development organizations have left.”

Thinking back on her time with World Renew, Olivia can see how the experience has shaped her and focused her interests.

“It was lovely to have my three passions — Christ, international development, and gender — all combine in one internship. I have realized since this internship that this is definitely the route in which I need to continue to go — these topics set my heart on fire and bring me closer to Christ's heart.”

If you are a student interested in an internship with World Renew, please contact Iona Buisman at [email protected].