Hello everybody. My name is Ariel Fry Demetria. I am a junior here at Mount Holyoke College. And today I'll be talking to you about my internship experience this summer. 

So I worked as a business administration intern at the Daraja Academy in Nanyuki, Kenya. And I know business and Ariel don't really go hand in hand. So when I told my best friend I wanted to major in economics, she rolled her eyes. 

So I worked at the Daraja Academy. The Daraja Academy is a residential high school for Kenyan girls that don't have means of furthering their education. 

And Daraja really prides itself in women's empowerment. Since in Kenya only 48% of girls are enrolled in secondary education, and 16% of women in Kenya are functionally illiterate, girls education is really crucial. 

Furthermore, when Kenyan families have only enough money to send one of their children to high school or to further their education, they usually send their son. So I really resonate well with the Daraja mission. 

I got this internship through a Mount Holyoke alum who works with my mom at Charles Schwab. And she was a Latin American studies major. And she now works finance. But I have a strong relationship with her because she speaks Spanish. And I speak Spanish. And she referred me to this program. And so I am eternally grateful to her for that. 

So some of my responsibilities and projects that I did during my internship was research. I researched potential partner organizations for the school. 

I also developed an online point of sale for the campus store and put together the buying prices, selling prices, and their margins. 

I also acted as a matron for a week, which is like an RA, because the girls had their midterm semester break. And so we did a lot of fun things. I facilitated some sleepovers in the dining hall. 

And the matron, the actual matron, had to take a girl to the hospital one night. So I watched her two year old baby. And that was probably one of the highlights of my experience there. 

And I also assisted with WISH classes. So each week every form, which are like grades, so 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, attends WISH classes. And that stands for Women of Integrity, Strength, and Hope. 

And these teach anything from sex ed to they teach a lot of FGM, which is Female Genital Mutilation, because that is really common in Kenya. 

They also teach a lot about childhood marriages and arranged marriages since a lot of the girls are unable to fulfill their education due to meeting boys to become married. 

And so I assisted with some of those. I made diagrams of the reproductive system, which was really fun, and taught the girls some of that. 

So going into the internship, I knew that I was going to learn some useful techniques that were going to help me in my economics career. And I did. I definitely learned Excel, which is a great thing. We all need that. 

[LAUGHTER] 

I learned how to strengthen my research skills. But what I really am going to take away obviously is not the Excel, not the research. Like similar to what Cat said, I developed such strong bonds with these students. 

I actually just went home for a weekend because two of them were doing a bunch of presentations in California. So I went to assist them with that and support them through that. 

And I think my experience in Kenya, and the connections I made is what I'm going to really take away. 

Furthermore, I also took a class at the University of San Francisco's School of Medicine. And it was called a pre-health undergraduate program after I returned home from Kenya. 

And that combined with some of the things I witnessed in Kenya, like a lot of 15 and 14 year old boys being so high off of glue because they don't have access to food, and don't have access to the medicine and the care that they need to support their disabilities and any type of medical problems they may have. 

That combined with a lot of the girls at the school had really bad toothaches because they don't have access to dental care. So that in combination with what I learned at PUP, which I worked alongside a third-year medical student. And her research project was really focusing on cause specific mortality rates due to ischemic strokes in low and middle income countries, which have really risen in the past 25 years. And they've gone down significantly in more prevalent countries. 

So those two combined, I am going as far away from-- well, not as far away as possible. But far away from economics. And because I am not somebody who can sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day and type. And I am actually developing my own major. It is called business health economics. 

And I really want to develop a health care system, or work towards developing a health care system that is accessible to way more people than its accessible to today, and caters to way more people than it is catering today, especially in developing countries. 

Lastly, these are some pictures I took during my time in Kenya. This monkey I fell in love with. It was holding my hand. That's my hand. Jumping all over me the whole time. And so yeah. That was my best friend that I made in Kenya. 

And then there are some camels that we saw walking around, zebras. Those are water buffalo. And, of course, that baby elephant is adorable. 

Yep. 

Woo! 

Woo! 

Thank you. 

[CLAPPING] 

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.