Elizabethtown College global studies scholarship awards $20,000

NGO Summer Interns travel to Colombia, Bangladesh

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA (06/12/2014)(readMedia)-- Elizabethtown College's Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking (CGUP) named Alyssa Zerbe and Stephen Brill as recipients of the 2014 NGO Summer Internship Financial Support Award, which covers travel and living expenses, plus provides a salary up to the amount of $10,000 each.

The students will work with a non-governmental organization (NGO), while learning and gaining skills to further their educational and career goals. Funding for the awards is provided by the College's CGUP through the U.S. Department of Education's Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language grant. The grant also funded the College's first-ever NGO Conference in November 2013, which involved 11 NGOs and more than 300 students and community members.

Alyssa Zerbe, a senior social work major, with a sociology and Spanish minor, will intern with Heart for Change, Ambassadors for Prosperity, in Bogota, Colombia, a partner host organization with the NGO Partners of the Americas. Zerbe will live with a Colombian host family, where she will use her Spanish language skills as she learns more about the city and life in Bogota. A student member of the College's Social Work Advisory Board, Zerbe has participated in several service-learning opportunities in Lancaster City, working with the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center. She also teaches English with the Washington Elementary after-school program.

Stephen Brill, an economics major, will live and work in Dhaka, Bangladesh over the summer and will intern with the Yunus Centre, working with the Poverty-Free World Campaign, which has a goal to make Bangladesh poverty free by 2030. He also will work on international communication and networking (linking aspiring entrepreneurs to established professionals) and social business. The Yunus Centre was established by Mohammed Yunus, the College's 2012 Ware Lecturer, who, along with the Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for its work with microfinance as a way to alleviate poverty. Brill served with the U.S. Marines from 2007 to 2011 in several underdeveloped countries such as Afghanistan and Kyrgystan before attending Elizabethtown. He is studying Economics with a desire to make a real difference in the world.

Students must submit an essay outlining the ways their internship will help them with their education and their career goals. Their grades and faculty and staff recommendations are considered. Upon completion of their internships, Zerbe and Brill will present a paper of their experiences, learnings and contributions.

The Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking creates opportunities for students and faculty and staff members to develop a sense of responsibility as citizens of the world who are knowledgeable about global issues, empathetic toward people of other cultures and nationalities and committed to the values of peace, human dignity and social justice.

Elizabethtown College, located in historic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than four dozen liberal arts, fine and performing arts, science and engineering, business, communications and education degrees. Learn more: http://www.etown.edu/about/

For a full story: http://now.etown.edu/index.php/2014/06/11/ngo-scholarship-immerses-interns-in-overseas-learning/

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