SEEKING METRO D.C. INTERNS & VOLUNTEERS
FOR
DC CITIZEN DIPLOMACY INITIATIVE (CDI)
ABOUT LEARNING LIFE & ITS CITIZEN DIPLOMACY INITIATIVE
Learning Life is a nonprofit educational program in Washington D.C. that works to innovate how we inform and engage ordinary citizens in public life. Learning Life is developing a Citizen Diplomacy Initiative that engages American families in Washington D.C. with foreign families abroad in dialogue and collaboration through “virtual exchange” or live internet video in order to foster global citizenship, international peace, and family and youth development.
ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY
Learning Life is now recruiting metro D.C. volunteers and student interns for the following roles:
1. Dialogue Organizers: Help find (a) families in D.C. and abroad willing to participate in our live, international, family-to-family dialogues, and (b) volunteer youth mentors/dialogue moderators, language interpreters and project advisors to assist with the dialogues and project collaborations the families’ children pursue.
2. Youth Mentors: Youth mentors: Adopt a participating family in D.C., moderating the family’s dialogues and assisting their family’ children in the international projects they pursue with their matched family’s children abroad.
3. Dialogue Interpreters & Document Translators: Fluent Arabic, French, Spanish and Tagalog speakers who can help with interpreting from English to the other language or vice versa during the live dialogues, and with translating CDI documents from English to other languages.
4. Project Advisors: Advise youth and their parents and mentors to help them carry out their international projects effectively. We’re looking in particular for working or retired professionals with knowledge and skills in the fields of digital media, photography, arts/design, food and agriculture, tourism and marketing, public history, education, business, and community development/organizing.
No prior experience is necessary, though students and professionals with interest and/or experience in international affairs, languages, civic engagement, and/or family and community development are encouraged to apply. Connections to families in D.C. (especially east of the Anacostia River, in Wards 7 or 8), or abroad in Latin America, Africa, Asia or the Middle East are a plus but not required.
Volunteers must be willing to commit 4 hours/week, and student interns 8 hours/week. This summer, interns and volunteers hold weekly work meetings together with Learning Life’s founder, Dr. Paul Lachelier, every Sunday 1-5pm at the Martin Luther King Public Library in DC’s Chinatown. Interns do an additional 4 hours of weekly independent work on their own time.
This opportunity is unpaid, but offers substantive, resume-building experience on an innovative international initiative, and a formal reference and/or recommendation letter given satisfactory performance.
HOW TO APPLY
Email Dr. Lachelier directly at paul@learninglife.info with your resume and times you are available in the next seven days for a phone interview.
