Internship in Peru

Carrie Rheingans

Since I’m crazy, I’m doing an additional internship as part of the FELA Program (Field Experience in Latin America) in Peru, with an organization called Vía Libre, the largest AIDS organization in Peru. I’ll only be here seven weeks, so I won’t have a lot of time to start a project. For my first week, I’ll be meeting with the project directors of most of the major projects at Vía Libre to learn more and possibly decide what I can help out with. One project I’ve discussed with Dr. Robinson Cabello, the Executive Director who will also be my supervisor, is to do an evaluation of the effectiveness of the mobile units used to do outreach, education, and HIV testing to various locations. This project is partially funded by the Ginsberg Student Fellows Program at the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning.

As a student in the U-M School of Social Work, I was asked to blog and tweet (on Twitter, a micro-blogging site) about my internship, daily life, and social aspects of living in Peru. You can see non-internship-related stuff on my personal blog and can follow me on Twitter to get updates as well. You can also see a map of the locations I’ve been to in Lima and surrounding areas via my google map.

Internship Learning Objectives

Carrie Rheingans

For those of us who do an internship/field placement, we have to write learning objectives before we start so we can focus on what we want to learn from our internship. For the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, we base these on our core competencies. I just submitted mine to my advisor and am now ready to start counting hours toward my internship! Since I’m doing over 1700 hours for my AmeriCorps service, I’ll have plenty to use to count toward my maximum 636 for HBHE… plus, I’m going to count some hours from my Field Experience in Latin America internship in Peru.

It was pretty easy to write my objectives based on the competencies. The way I started was by going through the competencies and seeing which ones will be covered by classes I’ve already taken. Many of them were covered already in my first semester! I discovered that the HBHE department has a couple that don’t currently have an HBHE class that covers them, so I decided to set those as my objectives. There are a couple more that I thought might work especially well for my agency, too, so I chose them as well. It was a pretty easy process, and it made me excited to start the new field placement in Lima in July! If you’d like to see my learning objectives as an example, I’ve posted them online here.

Field Placement/Internship

Most departments at U-M SPH have an internship or field placement requirement (Epidemiology, Health Management and Policy and Health Behavior and Health Education). I’m doing a split field placement with part of my placement being at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC) in Ypsilanti, Michigan and the other part at Via Libre, an AIDS organization in Lima, Peru. I’ll be going to Via Libre through the Field Experience in Latin America (FELA) program at SPH.

Carrie Rheingans

This post is just about my work at HARC (I’ll write about Via Libre once I get there in July). I’m a member of HARC’s Prevention Team, doing outreach, education, and HIV testing, counseling and referrals. I’ve been affiliated with HARC since September 2004, when I was first a volunteer there through Project Community, a community-based sociology program at U-M. Since that time, I’ve volunteered in the office, on the mobile outreach unit (a UPS-sized van), the HIV testing clinic and at other community locations. For a year and a half, I was a full-time staff member doing fund development and community events. Since August, I’ve officially been the AmeriCorps member and my main job responsibilities are to provide HIV testing, make presentations at community events, help with volunteer coordination, and support the Education & Marketing Committee of the Board of Directors. I also represent HARC on the Spanish Healthcare Outreach Collaborative, a group of providers from local health and community organizations that have services in Spanish.

I’m doing this field placement through a National Direct AmeriCorps Program adminsistered through the National AIDS Fund. There are teams in seven total cities in the U.S.: Detroit, Charlotte (NC), Chicago (IL), Santa Fe/Albuquerque (NM), Washington, D.C., Indianapolis (IN), and Tulsa (OK). It’s a full-time program, so I’m serving at HARC full-time while also attending classes full-time.  Yes, it’s difficult, but it’s worth it! To learn more about all the teams, check out our group blog.

Team Detroit in Santa Fe for pre-service training in August

Greetings From Carrie!

Ann Arbor has beautiful autumns!

Hello all!

Carrie Rheingans

Thank you for visiting the University of Michigan School of Public Health student blog!  I’m excited to share my experiences with you during my time here.  I’ll try to avoid acronyms, and I’ll use real names for professors and classes, so you can learn more about them from their faculty pages.  I will, however, be changing my friends’ names to give a little privacy.

This is my 6th year as a University of Michigan student, since I went here for 5 years for my undergrad degree in German Language and Literature and Cellular and Molecular Biology.  I took a couple years off to work in the field at the People’s Food Co-op and the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC).  I learned a lot about natural remedies at the co-op and gained valuable public health experience doing HIV testing, education/outreach, and event planning at HARC.  I’m in the department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE), and I’m in the process of applying to the Unviersity of Michigan School of Social Work to do the dual degree.  Right now, I’m doing my field placement for HBHE as an AmeriCorps member serving with a team of seven AmeriCorps members in Detroit.  I grew up mainly in Michigan (except for two years in Georgia in elementary school), and I’ve lived in Freiburg, Germany and Durban, South Africa, both times doing research and playing lots of soccer!  I’m excited to be doing an additional field placement in Lima, Peru this summer through the Field Experience in Latin America (FELA) program.

As a student blogger, I hope to give you some insight into campus and Ann Arbor life, U-M Public Health courses, professors, and more.  Please leave comments to ask questions and add opinions – and take the polls!