First day at SELCO Foundation

(Originally written on Tuesday, June 7th)

I woke up feeling a lot better! Today was my first day interning at SELCO Foundation, an environmental public health non-profit. This place is so great!!!!! It's one of the first places where I've felt fully comfortable and safe since getting here. People smile a bunch and are super caring and helpful, and there are white people that work here (which sounds silly but I've only seen a handful of white people since getting to India and it's nice to not be stared at because I look different, which helps me not feel like such an outsider.) I do think I'm one of the youngest person working/interning here but I don't mind. This is the first internship I've had where information from past  college classes has been surprisingly helpful and useful. I'm working with the education team, which comes up with ideas that help students (like rechargeable solar lights so students can continue studying when the sun goes down if their homes don't have power), visits rural schools to get student's ideas for other helpful technical livelihood interventions, and so many other things. The poorest 3/4 of the global population only uses 10% of the global energy, and SELCO has created a lengthy solution that encourages growth with the most sustainable solutions while prohibiting dependence (which I'm not going to go into or it would take pages of writing), but wow this foundation strives towards a lot of the things I'm really passionate about, IT'S AMAZING!!!!