VACorps (Kaya Responsible Travel) - South Africa

Final Report: VACorps, Kaya Responsible Travel – South Africa

This summer, I had the pleasure of working with Kaya Responsible Travel’s affiliate organization, VACorps in Capetown, South Africa. This internship consisted of several distinct aspects, including cultural sessions and buddy chats, a team project, and an individual project. Each different facet of the internship helped me to develop a variety of hard skills and interpersonal skills as well as a strong sense of cultural competency. I found a great sense of personal fulfillment working with this organization, as I was also able to add concrete value to their projects through my work. Overall, I consider this internship to have been a great success, both personally and professionally, and I would strongly urge others considering the possibility of participating in a remote internship to take advantage of the opportunity.

The first aspect of my internship included cultural immersion. The organization did an excellent job of surmounting the challenge of facilitating our cultural education and exchange despite the program being completely virtual. Each week, we participated in a cultural session in which we watched a presentation about South Africa, about themes such as climate, social norms, and other customs. After the presentation, we were allowed to engage the presenters and ask questions about their personal experiences and perspectives. Additionally, we were assigned a buddy with whom to schedule weekly video calls to learn more about each other's cultures. These calls were very relaxed and provided an opportunity for one on one cultural exchange as we could ask each other questions about anything we wanted to know about what it was like to live in the other country. This allowed me to create a meaningful relationship with my buddy. Although this was unrelated to the actual work of my internship, I found it to be very worthwhile as it has helped me to learn how to be a better and more aware global citizen.

The interns in my cohort were assigned to work with Dr. Takiyah White Ndwanya on a project to help facilitate her research project being funded by UNAIDS. This was an invaluable research experience in which I gained a lot of new concrete knowledge in the field of public health as well as sharpening my technical skills in using Excel, Google Suite, Microsoft Teams, and NVivo. The project included conducting a literature review of different charitable organizations focused on HIV/AIDS and other diseases in Southern and Eastern Africa and exploring how their work evolved in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. After we compiled this information, we then evaluated whether or not the organizations should be included in the database, and if so, the principal investigators interviewed the leaders of the organizations. We processed the transcripts of these interviews in NVivo and tagged different aspects as they applied to universal healthcare. This is a continuing project which will eventually be published as a journal article exploring the resiliency of charitable organizations and how they can continue to serve their communities as the country moves towards a universal healthcare system. Dr. White Ndwanya assured us that our work as part of our internships were instrumental in assuring the success of this project.

The final assignment of my internship was a personal project that I undertook under the guidance of Dr. Vuyiseka Dubula-Majola. This project was less focused on the field research aspect of public health and more focused on the community outreach aspect. I assisted Dr. Dubula-Majola in several activities that benefited her charitable organization. First, I helped with designing posters for weekly meetings and teaching her team how to utilize graphic design software. Additionally, I was able to work with her group of young women and girls in their leadership group and collect feedback about how the organization could better serve them. This was extremely valuable to both myself in learning more about their lives, as well as to the organization as I could help make suggestions for how to be more effective. Finally, I helped compile important public health information to be distributed among their members in a way that was both culturally and age-appropriate. I not only got to learn more about what challenges young women and girls face in South Africa but also assist them in making safe and healthy choices for themselves. My personal project was vital to helping me have a successful cross-cultural experience. I am so grateful to have had this internship experience and for all of the people, I was able to both help and learn from.