The First Week of My Internship with Ecotrackers

June 1, 2007

Margaret Novak

It is Friday, and I have just finished up my first week interning with Ecotrackers. I was a little nervous coming into this internship, as working in another country can be a little scary, but after being here for a week, I am very happy with it. It is wonderful to work with so many intelligent, passionate, and kind people. This is exactly the type of organization that I would like to work with in the future.

My first day, I spent most of the time listening to Max, the Director of Projects and my supervisor, explain how Ecotrackers works and what the organization encompasses. I learned quite a bit and everything that he had to say was extremely interesting. The next day, we talked more about what kind of work I would be doing, including translating documents into English, working on the Ecotrackers website, and attending to volunteers. I will also be able to spend the weekends visiting various sites, which I am excited to do. At one point a couple of men from Esmeraldas came in for a meeting to talk about a new project. They want to set up a program to save ancient trees in Maldonado. Apparently there is a huge problem with deforestation in this poor community because the palmafricana companies are buying trees for only $10.00 each in order to cut them down and make room for their business. This is devastating as some of the trees are 300 years old. With their proposed project, people would be able to ¨adopt¨ a tree for only $20.00, twice as much as the community is currently getting per tree, and then that particular tree would be protected. They talked about starting a website and promoting it to various universities in the United States, specifically those with large African-American populations (as Esmeraldas has a large Afro-Ecuadorian population). This was a very interesting meeting, and I am glad that I was able to be in on this new idea. I think that it would be very exciting to work on such a project. The past few days I have been working on translating a couple of documents. Their contents are extremely interesting, and I have enjoyed learning more about intelligent tourism and the issues facing Ecuador. Some of the abstract concepts have been slightly challenging to translate, but I like a challenge.

The only downfall to my current situation is that I spend about 3 to 4 hours on the bus commuting in and out of work everyday, as my Uncle lives in Pifo. Since I come in from 9:00am to 5:00pm, I have to wake up at 6:30am and then I don’t end up getting home until around 7:30pm. It is also very cold in Quito. I am glad that I am able to wear sweatshirts and jeans to work, but I think I need some mittens. However, the long days and the cold weather are a small price to pay for the experience that I am receiving while working with the Ecotrackers organization. It has only been one week and I am already learning a lot, I have met people from all over the world. Everyone here is really nice and I know that I am really going to enjoy interning with Ecotrackers this summer.