Reflections on my Internship
By Naptha
I am Naphta Derolus, a former student of Bridge, and it's a pleasure for me to share with you a little bit about my internship with OPREH organization. In January 6th of this year, I started an internship with the OPREH organization, commonly called “Restavek Freedom Foundation”. This organization is fighting to end child slavery in Haiti. During my internship, my tasks were to work with the child advocates (social workers) in their daily activities, to accompany them during their visits to different schools and during their home visit as well. It was an interesting experience! I grew up in a orphanage so I know that life’s challenges are hard but listening the stories of these restavek children and these young adults I realized how life challenges can be harder for some people than others. During those past six months, I have learned a lot about the work that OPREH is doing in the country and most specifically how hard the work of the child advocate is. I really enjoy working with these children because I feel good by doing that.
Professionally, this experience taught me many things like how to manage my time, how to work faster, etc. Working with the children is not a easy task because there are some stories that after listening to them you can become overwhelmed with the struggle of the child. There are stories of these children that a person in another country will never imagine that a human being will have to deal with because that situation so terrible. Those stories of what the children go through in slavery situations are very sad and painful and most of the time you can’t do too much to help them other than giving them hope. The most important thing with these children, it’s no matter what the situation they are dealing with, you can see in their eyes that they are not discouraged with life.
This experience helped me understand the difficult life that the restavek child lives in and why it is mandatory to end child slavery in Haiti and around the world.
Thank you!
