Megan in South Africa

Participant

Megan

Programme

Internship

Country

🇿🇦 South Africa

Duration

10 weeks

Short bio

Hi! I’m Megan and I did a 10-week internship in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I’m a second-year student at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in Velp, where I study International Development Management. I love spending my free time dancing and doing fun things with friends or
family 🙂

How satisfied were you with the support from Holland?

I’m really happy with the support Ruben gave before and during my time in South Africa! He told me clearly what to expect, so I didn’t face any surprises. Thanks Ruben 🙂

My story

“There wasn’t a single moment when I wanted to go home, and I was really gutted when that day came! This was an amazing experience!”

Megan · internship in South Africa

I chose to do a 10-week internship with UTS in South Africa and my oh my, it was truly one of the best choices I’ve ever made!

First of all, the programme itself is great fun and hugely inspiring! Three times a week I got to teach sports lessons to children who are super enthusiastic, driven and talented! I taught hockey and dance to children of different ages (9-14) and loved it! For the younger kids (5-8) there was a different programme, “Learn to move”, where we did all sorts of movement games with them. The children always beamed so much! At the start of the sessions people always said “Come on guys, let’s inspire the kids!”, but to be honest it was the other way round! The way the children could enjoy the lessons and each other so intensely was really inspiring and amazing to see!

One day a week I also gave 1-to-1 English lessons at Isaac Booi primary school. Because I was there for quite a long period, I really saw the children grow in their English and especially in their confidence with it! Whether they did it for themselves or for the stickers they got at the end of a session, they did it all the same! Those proud little faces when they’d finished reading a whole book are etched in my mind, and I’ll never forget them 🙂

On top of that I was in a really lovely group of volunteers! We all got on brilliantly and very quickly became a really close-knit group! I had 2 fantastic roommates who made my time there so easy!

We also had the weekends free. UTS had already planned a few trips, such as Jeffrey’s Bay, safari, skydive, bungee jumping, etc. I really recommend joining in. These are genuine bucket list things that not many people get to tick off and, well, you’re there anyway so you might as well do it ;).

There wasn’t a single moment when I wanted to go home, and I was really gutted when that day came! This was an amazing experience!