Fall 2007
Montevideo

Katy ADAMS
SaludArte
During my time here in Montevideo I conducted my internship with a program called SaludArte. This program aims to improve public health through the implementation of art and humor, such as playback theatre for educational purposes or sending clowns to hospitals. Overall, I had a great experience with this organization. It is led my Rasia Friedler, an incredibly talented and inspirational individual who I feel an extreme pleasure to have worked with. Over the past four months during my time with SaludArte, I worked on translations for their website, for brochures pertaining to the various theatrical performances which they produced and also translated speeches. My main work for their organization was an investigation on the color therapy and alternative treatments such as humor, which will eventually be posted online with the organization’s new website. This experience was particularly helpful for me because it allowed me to deepen my interest and knowledge of psychology while simultaneously getting to know a local organization. SaludArte allowed me to truly get to know Montevideo and showed me a side of the city that I would have otherwise never experienced.

Lacey ELMORE
Casa de la Mujer
I spent the fall semester in 2007 interning at La Casa de la Mujer. This organization was founded to help women with counseling, help finding jobs, or help finding lawyers. The majority of the women seeking help at La Casa de la Mujer live below the poverty line, and many of them have also been abused. La Casa de la Mujer also has classes set up to help teenage girls and boys who have dropped out of school. For my part in helping this organization, I spent 12 hours a week for four months working at La Casa de la Mujer. I spent 10 hours a week helping out with administrative duties, helping file receipts, and helping make photocopies. For 2 hours each week I taught an English and culture class. Every Monday I spent 1 hour teaching English to a group of pregnant teenagers and a group of women who had received hardly any education. I spent 1 hour every Thursday teaching English to a group of about fifteen teenage girls who had dropped out of school. I found my time at La Casa de la Mujer to be a very rewarding experience.

Fall 2006
Montevideo

Ximena VENGOECHEA
Cinemateca Uruguaya
I worked at Cinemateca Uruguaya, an organization that screens foreign and independent films in movie theatres in Uruguay. Cinemateca also works with the Escuela de Cine de Uruguay for an annual film school festival, which features international student films on Cinemateca movie screens. My job was to translate film dialogue for subtitles in Spanish, and also to provide translations of synopsis, etc for program material. Post-festival I worked on translations for classes at the school, translating what I could of documentary theory and other film class subjects.

Caitlin VINCEK
Gurises Unidos
I did an internship with Gurises Unidos, an Uruguayan organization that works with underprivileged children, adolescents and their families. Once a week, I traveled to a technical high school in a lower class neighborhood to work as an English tutor. It involved a good deal of work, because I had to plan classes on my own time and be prepared to teach and work with students that have difficulties academically and often times are dealing with other issues that may make it challenging for them to focus in a classroom setting. I learned a lot working with these students. I was able to apply things that I learned about linguistics in class, in addition to learning how to plan lessons, teach, be flexible and build constructive, personal relationships with my students. I also worked on a project called “Jóvenes Arte y Parte,” where I helped plan an event where adolescents got together to learn about gender and relationships and to express their ideas on the topic in an artistic manner. Finally, I worked with the administrative team of Gurises Unidos, where I learned a lot about how the organization runs as well as its goals, contributions to and relations with the community.

Jessica WEISS
SaludArte
SaludArte is a nonprofit foundation that works to promote health through the use of art. Specifically the foundation uses techniques such as Playback Theater and dance to involve an audience in addressing problems pertaining to health and to the Uruguayan society in general. SaludArte holds a variety of workshops most of which are free and open to the public in an effort to stimulate the citizens to take an active role in promoting societal change. There are ample opportunities for those with artistic abilities to become involved in the performances and interact with the public. There are also opportunities for those who are more stage shy or do not have a particular interest in the arts. Activities included translation of letters and other documents, the organization of an art contest for Uruguayan youth living both in Uruguay and abroad and the solicitation of donations and support.

Fall 2005
Montevideo

Anna SPENCER
Gurises Unidos
An internationally respected NGO, Gurises Unidos (Kids United) is dedicated to ensuring the rights of children. Basic rights such as the right to an education, to health care, and a true childhood in which one does not have to earn a salary for his/her family, are denied a certain segment of Uruguayan society not only because of simple economics, but also due to paradigm; it simply does not occur to some parents that their children should not be working on the streets.

Project Proniño works specifically with child labor. Their goal is, through working with communities, schools, families, and the children themselves, to move the country away from its dependence upon children as wage earners. In this highly successful program teachers suggest to the team leaders children who they think could benefit from the help Gurises Unidos offers. The families of the children then undergo a series of interviews in which they must agree to several demands: parents must attend a bimonthly meeting in their neighborhood, the children must attend school regularly, the children must not be made to work (to earn money), etc. In return the program gives the families a stipend to substitute for the income that the children had previously been earning.

The goals of the program are to educate the parents in the rights of their children, to give the parents a support network through which they might ensure their children's childhood, and most importantly, to get the gurises off the street and into school in hopes of providing them with a brighter future. 

Spring 2005
Montevideo

Danielle NAUGLE
Mundo Afro
While studying abroad in Montevideo I participated in an internship in a local organization, Organizaciones Mundo Afro, dedicated to protecting the rights of Afro-Uruguayans. The organization is involved in many areas including education, health, poverty, women's' rights, the preservation of Afro-Uruguayan culture and politics. Unfortunately, during my internship the organization was undergoing a period of transition and therefore not all of the branches were functioning to full capacity. My activities included cataloguing the resources in the organization's library and participating in seminars dealing with several of the organization's current activities such as affirmative action for Afro-Uruguayans and preparations for an international conference on racism. While the experience was not all that I had hoped for, it was definitely worthwhile.

Fall 2003
Montevideo

Caroline MCGEE
Pasantia
Hughes y Hughes is one of the most powerful and important law firms in Montevideo and in Uruguay as a whole.  The twelve lawyers specialize in everything from Family law to Employment law.  Because the size of the laws firm is one of the largest in Uruguay, they not only have secretaries for each lawyer, but they also have runners and "procuradores".  The procuradores are usually, but not always, in law school or preparing to becomes a lawyer, and go to the courts and ask for information regarding the cases and how they are coming along.  For my internship, I went to the courts with the chief procurador three times a week for three hours each day and learned about his job and how the courts and the legal system in Uruguay functions.  Towards the end of my internship I began asking for the information myself to practice my Spanish and advance my knowledge of the court system.  Altogether my internship was a very enjoyable experience, not only due to its interesting objective, but also due to the friendliness and the helpfulness of the staff and lawyers at Hughes y Hughes. 

Megan LOOSIGIAN
Centro de Latina America de Economia Humana
I worked in the CLAEH (Centro de Latina America de Economia Humana), specifically la Red Mercosur (Mercosur Network) for half the month of October and the month of November.  The main purpose of my internship was to be able to attend a large, important conference the seventeenth and eighteenth of November in the Mercosur building.  The work I did for them, especially at the beginning, was organizing papers and putting together packers of information to send people involved in the Mercosur.  I did a lot of passing information from paper onto the computer and translating things from Spanish to English.  During the time of the conference I went as an official member of the organization and I handed out the information that I had earlier put together in folders and ran the slide shows on Power Point for the speakers.  I learned a lot about the issues facing the Mercosur countries and about the topics of the FTAA.  Although I wasn't working with the organization very long because I started at a different internship that didn't work out for me for the month of September and half of October, I really enjoyed my time there and I felt very comfortable with the people with whom I worked.  I would recommend this internship to future students, especially those who have an interest in economics and the issues facing and affecting Latin America right now, or at the time of their study abroad.