Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

Hey everyone! This is Mercury Metropolitan, previous intern for the Camp Global Kids summer program checking in. I’ve been offered another internship with Global Kids, so I’m back! Woohoo! Let me just start off by expressing my utter gratitude and enthusiasm! I’m so excited to be back on the team and look forward to getting started on some really cool & exciting projects we have planned!

This past summer was absolutely fantastic! I learned so much and had a wonderful time as an intern. However, I was so busy that I didn’t post as much as I would have wanted to in this blog, so let me begin by detailing some of the tasks assigned to me as a Camp Global Kids intern.

I facilitated various events; the most memorable being Child Sex Trafficking Awareness and Activism, which was totally planned by myself and the other campers. That was very successful and we had an amazing turnout. Never had I really hosted such a large-scale event, and I was really proud of my ability to captivate the audience in such a way that kept them interested and thinking about the issue being discussed. There were also events throughout the program that I helped to facilitate with GK staff members. I also played a key role in the processing of workshops and activities we held by asking the group a series of questions and receiving their feedback and opinions.

Helping to plan some of the workshops and set up for them was also very fun. Much creativity and time was put into the preparation of each daily workshop, and I was always satisfied with the result. There was only one time that I was ever frustrated during my internship, and that was because I had forgotten that ‘autoreturn’ was on, a feature in Second Life that allows you to set a timer on your land that returns other people’s objects. So, I was building on that land for a fair amount of time when *POOF*, the entire build was returned to me. But, with some quick thinking and creative problem solving, we made it work!

Because I was technically an ‘intern’ and not a camper, I made sure to keep my personal views neutral from the group, but the workshops and activities really made me learn and assess some very interesting topics dealing with global issues. If it were not for this program, I wouldn’t have known such things as ‘gross domestic product’ or ‘globalization. Oh, and not to mention some of the eye-opening aspects of these workshops dealing with more controversial and mature subjects such as child sex trafficking, the poverty in Haiti, and the genocide happening in Darfur! So, all technicalities aside, I was indeed a camper as well as an intern.

Another one of my responsibilities as an intern was to advertise the program before it even began, and to help teens sign up and register for it. This was quite the task! I posted in the Teen Second Life Events forum, purchased advertising space from ‘Tin Bling’ whom I later convinced to sign up for the program, and started reaching out to my close friends in Second Life. In my opinion, the latter was the most successful! Most of my friends that applied told their friends, and the grassroots effort had begun. This just goes to show you how far word of mouth goes in Second Life. To my exultation, most of my friends who signed up were chosen to participate. Everyone pretty much already knew each other in some way. (Yes, the Teen Grid feels like a small town.) I felt that this made us an even more productive group, and it was easier for us to communicate and understand one another. So, it all worked out for the best!

I’ve really taken a lot from the experience as an intern. I hope to apply all of my previous experience as an intern to this new internship, and am really looking forward to it. I’ll keep you guys updated throughout my second internship adventures! ~ MM out!