Summer interns, Shazra Azeez, Arina Kadam and Deborah Ngan have successfully completed their fulfilling and fruitful internship at the Asian American Health Initiative. Since the beginning of their internship, these wonderful interns actively participated in projects, outreach events and supported AAHI with their creative ideas and fresh perspectives. At their farewell celebration, the interns presented their Photo Voice Project to staff. They did an excellent job presenting their project, which highlighted linguistically competent Asian American resources and services in the area.
Prior to saying their goodbyes, AAHI interns sat down with Program Coordinator, Atyya Chaudhry, for an informal interview. When asked to describe the internship at AAHI, Deborah said it was “enlightening, an eye-opening experience”. For Shazra, Deborah and Arina, this internship shed some light on the real world of public health and more importantly, the health issues faced by Asian Americans. “This internship provided exposure to outreach in the community and research methods” says Arina. Shazra continued to say, “we are thrilled that our research skills have evolved, knowing how critical this will be in our future public health work”.
“This internship was a great experience, we learned so much by working in a real public health setting” echoed all three interns. When asked to further elaborate on what they learned, “office professionalism” says Arina. “We learned how to uphold a professional atmosphere in an office setting” she continued to say. Expanding on that, Deborah said “we learned how to use Microsoft Outlook and maintain professionalism in emails.” “But the biggest lesson learned” says Shazra, “was how to apply theory to practice, how to apply what we learned in school to real-life, public health settings”.
After discussing the internship experience, we shifted gears to chat about their most memorable projects. “My most memorable project was the AAHI Storybook” (soon to be released) says Arina. She enjoyed supporting AAHI in research for this project. “For me, it was the Health Disparities Bazaar, hosted by Maryland’s DHMH” says Deborah. At this event, Deborah actively engaged in reaching out to and educating the participants about AAHI. Shazra says “my most memorable moment at AAHI was participating in outreach meetings”. Shazra accompanied Program Coordinator, Sanjana Quasem, in her meetings with community leaders.
On a final note, Arina, Deborah and Shazra shared parting advice for future AAHI interns:
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions”- Arina
“Take as much experience as you can from this internship”- Deborah
“Get involved in outreach efforts”- Shazra
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