Binder #: 29
Major: International Studies, Developmental Studies
Passion: Environmental Sustainability
Organization: The Normal Rotary Club, Water And Sanitation Rotarian Action Group
Project Title: “Rotary Water Project”
Project Summary: The political science internship is a wonderful opportunity and works well for people that can work on their own and take initiative because most of the work I did was on my own. I was able to attend Rotary meetings and learn about its purpose and its members. A great thing about the Rotary meetings is the wealth of knowledge in one room. I learned that you need to get the right people with different skills and focuses working together on the right project to get it going. The Rotary Club brings members from outside the club to present on different organizations in the community and helps us learn about what is going on locally. My project was with WASRAG, the Water And Sanitation Rotarian Action Group, and one of its target projects was Start With Water, “a global leadership initiative for safe water.” I helped the Rotarians list projects related to water and sanitation on WASRAG’s website. I also translated brochures that talked about WASRAG and how to become a member into Portuguese, which was used in late May for the World Water Summit in New Orleans. The key project I worked on was to translate a training manual into Portuguese and film it, then I made it available online to Rotary clubs all over the world. This would eliminate the need for training sessions because a training video would be so much more accessible.