Name: Chaewon Lee
Class Year: 2027
Major: Geology, History
Minor: Environmental Studies
 
Internship Organization: Nationalities Service Center
Internship Title:  RUI Program Intern
Location:  Philadelphia, PA
 
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing! 

The Nationalities Service Center is a non-profit organization that hosts a variety of programs to support Philadelphia’s immigrant and refugee community. During my summer, I was part of the Refuge Upskilling Initiative (RUI) program, which is part of the Employment department, where I assisted my supervisors in crafting individualized skill planning documents for our clients. These individualized skill plannings outlined the goals and desired career goals of our clients, and we as a team would support them in achieving these goals. Many of our employment programs seek to provide our clients with the necessary skills to succeed in the United States, such as learning how to find jobs, take ESL courses, write resumes, and essentially build your career. The RUI program calls for employer partnerships (employers in the Philadelphia region who would like to enroll their immigrant and refugee employees with our program), thus I also worked on calling many companies to advocate for our program and for potential partnerships. Additionally, this summer, I was able to call and meet clients and hear their success stories with our training plans.

Why did you apply for this internship?  

I applied to intern for the Nationalities Service Center because of our current political environment and hostility towards immigrant and refugee communities. As an immigrant myself, I experienced first-hand the hardships of moving to a new country; the fear of blindly facing every step of life in a foreign place. With the already difficult circumstance of moving to a new country added on to the pressure of the political hostility towards immigrants, I wanted to do whatever was possible within my ability to be a help to these communities. I wanted this summer to be one where I can be a service to others and truly be a light of hope during our challenging times. Moreover, as a political science major with interest in policy, I wanted to gain hands-on experience on how much federal policies affect the people in our community.
 
What has been your favorite part of this internship? 

My favorite part about my internship was the people I got to meet and work with. I will be honest, there were many challenging days where almost so many of us felt hopeless do to so many of our coworkers getting laid off and our programs shutting down because of massive budget cuts. Despite all the valid reasons to feel hopeless, dreadful, and disheartened, I was shocked by the resilience of my supervisors and other staff members. Everyone around me would always come to work with a smile, and a bright attitude that would help not only all of us feel a little more hopeful, but also our clients. Seeing everyone still hold onto the strand of hope that was all fabricated through each and every one of our efforts to be a reason for our clients’ smile was an amazing experience. NSC’s staff members’ resilience, strength, kindness, and dedication was inspiring and I hope to be like them one day.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship? 

The biggest challenge I faced at my internship has been trying to convince companies and employers to partner with our organization. To support the RUI program, we need companies and employers to become partners and provide us with employees or we provide them with our clients that way both parties go through the program together. However, this is easier said than done. The majority of my calls with employers would always end with “we are not interested” or most will not even hear about the program as soon as I mention immigrants and refugees. This was incredibly disheartening and oftentimes left me feeling stuck and powerless in society. I went to intern for this organization to be a source of help, but I felt as if everything I was doing did not matter because society was rather neglectful towards our cause and also afraid of supporting us due to the overall political environment. Thus, there were many days where I simply did not know how to tackle this greater obstacle: society’s perception towards immigrants and refugees. I am still in the process of figuring this challenge out, but I have learned through my experience with NSC that there is hope as long as we keep trying, which was proven to be true when I was finally able to receive an answer from an employer saying they were interested!