Olga Lacey
Ireland, Europe
2021

Olga is studying  International Peacebuilding, Security & Development Practice at Maynooth University in Ireland. She joined the VACorps program as a remote intern, where she participated in the VACorps Human Rights Internship Program. She plans on continuing her internship in-country when she visits Cape Town in January 2021. 

“I chose to do a remote internship as a pre-cursor to coming to South Africa. During the three months, I learned a lot about the culture and the people. This was possible due to the weekly remote interactions and video calls and I would not be as knowledgeable about coming to Cape Town if I didn’t get the opportunity to understand more about the country I am going to travel to. I loved the intimate buddy calls – I could ask anything I wanted to know more about and I felt welcomed without actually having stepped a foot on the ground yet.

As a Human Rights Intern, I was under the supervision of Kelly and Simon. They were wonderful mentors and gave me the freedom to work flexibly and at my own pace. Their warm personalities aided in my remote experience and I look forward to meeting with them in person. I feel that this remote internship experience had a HUGE impact on my self-esteem and made me realize that I have more potential than I thought I had. I felt that this remote experience was necessary for my in-country experience in the next few months.”

View Human Rights Internships

Meet our most recent VACorps program alumni:

Chris Doe, Massachussets, USA (2023)

Chris joined the VACorps program in January 2023 as part of his Gap year and participated in a human rights internship.  I decided to come to Cape Town to do an internship because I […]

Nico Theunissen, New York, USA (2023)

Nico joined the VACorps Program in January 2023 as part of his Gap year and participated in an internship at a clean energy engineering company.  “Living in New York City, coming to Cape Town […]

Derya Tunçaral, Istanbul, Turkey (2023)

Derya is a recent graduate of Istanbul Bilgi University where he earned his bachelor’s in International Relations. He joined the VACorps program in November 2022 and participated in a political science internship.  “It was […]

Isabelle Ryan, Illinois, USA (2023)

Isabelle joined the VACorps Program in January 2023 as part of her Gap year and participated in a business internship.  “Originally, I was nervous about coming to Cape Town. I had never been so […]

Alize Serez, Istanbul, Turkey, (2023)

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Carley Adams, Ontario, Canada, (2023)

Carley is a recent MSc graduate of the University of Edinburgh, specializing in Medical Anthropology. She joined the VACorps Program in January 2023 and participated in a public health internship.  “Cape Town is such […]

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