An Intern's Reflection: By Isabella Daley

Summer intern, Emiliana's memories of Tanzania help her define goals while working at
Heartfelt Tidbits.

Working with Heartfelt Tidbits has "[re]awakened feelings" related to the difficulties of the immigrant experience for intern Emiliana.  Her opportunities to assist with the educational summer camp at AWL as well as working with some individual cases have reminded her where she came from and where she hopes to go.

Emiliana grew up in Tanzania before moving to the United States when she was 6 or 7 years old.  Her dad arrived a few years earlier than her mom and three sisters because he came on a student visa "back when it was super easy to get one," Emiliana said.  He earned his master's, started teaching, and then received help from a church organization to file visas for his family to join him. 

On their flight to the US, "my mom dressed us in these huge ballgowns," Emiliana explained, recalling how she had to run between airport gates in incredibly fancy dresses with her mom and her sisters.  Other than that, Emiliana said "I don't remember any feelings I had. I was just a kid." 

Her family landed in New Mexico and moved to Ohio about 2 years later.  Emiliana learned English relatively quickly thanks to her dad's fluency and her young age.  "For me [learning English] was quick because I was a kid, so I just picked it up.  I don't remember struggling at all, but my sisters most likely did because they were teens at the time.  So they had the thick accent, and my mom was even worse," she said.  Her first cereals here were Cheerios and Corn Flakes, and she remembers learning to ride a bike in a parking lot. 

Since she came here when she was so little, most of Emiliana's memories are from the US - except for the Tanzanian food of her childhood.  One specific candy called Ubuyu comes from a tree in Tanzania, and Emiliana asks her family to bring a large bag back for her every time they visit home because "it's really delicious."  This red candy is coated in a sweet powder on the outside with a soft, fruity inside which "you suck on until you get to the seed and spit it out," Emiliana said.  "It leaves your tongue red," she added. 

In December 2020, Emiliana visited Tanzania for the first time since she arrived in the US.  "There were a whole lot of emotions," she said.  She experienced a feeling of belonging as she heard people speaking Swahili and noticed that the majority of the people there were African like her.  "I felt home. I felt like I was with my people."

In visiting Tanzania and beginning her internship with Heartfelt Tidbits, Emiliana's perspective and focus shifted.  Now that she has had the opportunity to work with other immigrants and refugees, she has realized the talents she can contribute to this work and has begun asking what more she can do.  She is asking herself questions such as, "if I was running Cincinnati, how would I handle this situation?"

She has applied her fluency in Swahili while making phone calls to invite families in the ESL program to a Family Fun Day event at AWL, and she used her skills in French to help a child who did not speak English during the summer camp. She is studying Political Science at Miami University with a Global Intercultural Studies co-major and was surprised to be able to apply her knowledge to some of the individual cases she has been assigned.  She has researched various social service agencies for a man looking for assistance and asked legal questions related to a family facing healthcare barriers.  

Emiliana remarked that she was even more prepared than she had expected to be for the internship because "last semester I took a refugee and immigrant class, ironically, and I didn’t know I was going to get  into this program so I was able to use the stuff I learned and read about in books and the policies and all that information."

Her experiences working with Heartfelt Tidbits and memories of home in Tanzania have led Emiliana toward new goals, pulling her especially toward Africa.  She hopes to start "working with the government, some sort of corporation, an organization, or anything involved with Africa" which would involve a job of "hopefully traveling back home," she said.  As for the specific work she hopes to do, Emiliana said she is looking for "anything refugee-related, immigrant-related, or even something with businesses if I know I'm doing something for [Africa]."

In light of her current internship, Emiliana is looking toward the future.  "I'm helping those who I can, so hopefully I'm able to help even more," she reflected.  "What is the footprint I want to leave?" 

Interning with Heartfelt Tidbits provides an impactful and dynamic experience for several college students throughout the summer.  One intern, Hannah, has applied skills from her Spanish classes and from years living abroad in her role helping the refugee and immigrant community.

Hannah is going into her senior year studying psychology and art therapy with a minor in Spanish at Miami University.  These programs sparked her interest in working with immigrants and refugees, especially when she took a class called Spanish for Community Work.  "The whole time we talked about immigration laws, read stories about immigrants, and watched documentaries about them," Hannah said.  

Hannah's background in psychology also proved useful in the summer camp at AWL because when she worked with the third-grade students, she could see "their level of empathy in how they treated the other kids." 

"I was surprised to learn I liked kids more than I thought I did," she explained.  Hannah has been at summer camps and babysat before, but she worried the kids would be draining at times.  This summer, she was able to see how sweet kids could be. "They just make my heart melt.  The stuff they say is so cute," she said. 

Though she enjoyed watching the kids develop new skills at camp, working with two boys whose mom is in and out of the hospital and taking them on adventures has been particularly meaningful for Hannah.  "They're in such a tough situation with their mom being sick," she explained.  One moment which stands out to her was listening to one of the boys describe how much fun he had at the park.  "It's just nice to be able to do something good for them, and hopefully it will impact them in the future," she said. 

This is the first internship Hannah has done that is specifically directed toward working with immigrants and refugees.  She previously volunteered with a virtual tutoring program for a Hispanic community in Cincinnati and has known other immigrants, but working at Heartfelt Tidbits "has opened my eyes to the daily struggle [immigrants and refugees] go through," she said. 

"I'm technically an immigrant," Hannah clarified.  "I was born in China, but I came here when I was an infant, and I'm very Americanized."  In using her Spanish to call ESL families for announcements about a Family Fun Day event, Hannah realized the difficulties immigrant families face without receiving help or understanding English.  However, her time living overseas while her mom was in the military "definitely helped me understand the situation of being in a foreign place where you don't speak the language," Hannah said.  

"We moved overseas a lot when I was growing up," she explained.  "It was with American people for the most part on American military bases in other countries."  However, when she lived in Japan and went "off base," she could not read any of the signs.  These experiences have given her more understanding of how immigrants might feel in a new place. "I'm lucky that a lot of the world speaks English, so we were able to get by.  People tend to be nice to Americans when you're in other countries, and I know that's not the case here where people are kind of rude to people who are not from the US," Hannah added.  

Now an experienced intern, Hannah says that people interested in working with immigrants and refugees should keep an open mind.  "If someone asks you to do something and you're the type of person that says 'eh I'd rather not,' then maybe this is not the type of job for you," she said with a laugh. 

Hannah's last bit of advice to future interns is that "at the end of the day you're trying to make an impact, and you have to be willing to put yourself out there. Be flexible, be willing to compromise."