Eli Brick ’17 mentored boys and girls in South Africa.
My name is Eli Brick, I am a geography major in the class of 2017. My internship was with an education nonprofit organization called Bright Start located in Hout Bay, Western Cape, South Africa. As a Bright Start intern, I was primarily responsible for the management of the organization’s community workshop program, daily mentorship activities with the Bright Start students (boys and girls ages 4-13), and the management of various social media platforms. One of the highlights of my experience was the designing and implementation of a community workshop covering parenting topics for parents of children in Hout Bay’s informal settlements, Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu. I was responsible for coordinating workshop facilitators, nailing down a workshop location, and determining workshop topics based on prior feedback from the community members. After having spent several weeks getting to know the children from these two communities who were involved in the Bright Start program, it was amazing to meet some of the parents and see them come out to discuss parenting strategies to enrich both their own experiences and those of their children.