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Praktikumsbericht Neuseeland

The internship at YFU New Zealand

1 The educational opportunity at YFU New Zealand

1.1 General description

As part of my studies at the University of Passau (International Business and Cultural Studies) I have been working as an intern in New Zealand from 1st May 2001 to September 30th 2001. I have been employed by Youth For Understanding (YFU) New Zealand an was taking part in their special internship programme. The internship required a high level of independent work and previous experience in the fields of Public Relations, Sales and Media and presented itself as both a demanding and rewarding job.

1.2 Youth For Understanding New Zealand

Youth For Understanding (YFU) is one of the oldest and largest student exchange organisations in the world. YFU provides the opportunity for secondary school students to live and study overseas for a year and experience completely different foreign cultures. The students live with selected host families, attend regular school and live in the chosen country for a full year. Cultural immersion and intercultural learning are the main imperatives of the exchange programme.

The YFU programme was established in 1951 with the exchange of seventy-five German and Austrian students to America at the initiative of the US State Department. Today YFU exchange organisations exist in over 50 countries around the world . Since 1951 YFU has exchanged more than 200,000 students worldwide and therefore is one of the largest student exchange organisations. YFU New Zealand was founded in 1986 and gained its independence as an incorporated company in 1993.

Currently YFU New Zealand welcomes about 270 foreign students on exchange to New Zealand and about 120 New Zealand student depart for overseas. For a small country like New Zealand (3.8 million inhabitants) these are quite high numbers and the number of students is growing.

2 The internship position at YFU New Zealand

2.1 Description of my internship

2.1.1 Different fields of work

My internship at YFU New Zealand was divided into four different parts. It consisted of working in the National Office in Wellington, preparing advertisements and publications, developing the YFU New Zealand WebPages, and promoting and selling the YFU Student Exchange Programme all over New Zealand. All parts combined together ensured a very diverse and challenging internship position which will be described in the following paragraphs.

2.1.2 Administrative work at National Office

Working in the national office formed one part of my internship at YFU in New Zealand. The National Office is based in Wellington and is the centre for the student exchange programme in New Zealand. It organises and supervises the main core of the exchange programme. I found it very important as an intern to start off in the National Office since it helped me to get to know the details of the offered exchange programme and to understand the views and goals of YFU. Work in the office included standard office work like filing and answering requests, processing applications for the exchange programme, and assisting the outbound and inbound managers with several other tasks. Counselling and talking to inbound and outbound students was another big part of working in the National Office. It once more improved my knowledge about YFU and prepared me for the other important parts of my internship. The work in the National office especially focused on the first two weeks of my internship. During the other time of my internship I normally spent about 7 days a month in the office to make appointments, organise events or do computer work including all major office applications.

2.1.3 Advertising and Publicising

Assisting YFU New Zealand in advertising campaigns and designing publication material was a second major part of my internship. I had already gathered plenty of experience in the field of publicizing and addressing consumers through two internships at newspapers in Germany and the UK. This prior knowledge helped me with the work at YFU. Tasks included the conception and realization of a new YFU Student Handbook that gives valuable information and help to YFU exchange students, the development of several flyers promoting new exchange opportunities and the preparation of advertisements. Advertising was a completely new challenge for me and I received assistance and guidelines from both the YFU Inbound Programme Manager and YFU Outbound Programme Manager. The advertising was mainly aimed at newspapers and magazines to promote new programmes and activities. The advertising work required the use of several computer applications such as Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word and Mediagrafix Picture Publisher. I found it very challenging to formulate and develop effective adverts in another language. Finding clear and capturing sentences was an interesting experience and contributed to the quality of the internship at YFU. Adverts were published in newspapers (e.g. The Dominion) and magazines (especially student magazines).

2.1.4 Developing and promoting the YFU WebPages

Establishing an internet presentation for YFU New Zealand formed the third part of my internship. I spent about one month developing, establishing and promoting a complete web project for YFU at www.yfu.co.nz. This part of my internship can be best described as an independent project. It required the thorough research of the benefits and goals that YFU could achieve through a effective Internet Presentation. I did background research on the history and development of YFU in New Zealand, created charts and tables that showed the possible uses of the WebPages, and developed a logical layout and navigation system for the WebPages. I then presented my ideas and solutions to the National Director and added requirements of the YFU Inbound and Outbound Managers to the final theoretical conception of the Web Project.

According to this final conception I built the WebPages within the following weeks. I already had some previous HTML knowledge but YFU also provided several books and technical training sessions to further my ideas in this field. The final Web Project contained about 80 pages and went online on 26 July 2001. It was great for me to work and implement this web project. My basic HTML knowledge was extended on a daily basis by practical experience and use. The WebPages for example now enable students to apply online for the YFU exchange programme, they offer discussion groups for YFU members, or simply provide information about exchange countries and programmes. As a direct result of the WebPages YFU could, for example, reduce its costs for printed advertising material and established the WebPages as an interactive communication platform for its members.

Several more activities were included in the Web Project such as promoting the pages in the media and press. Today I am still monitoring the YFU WebPages and am maintaining their content on request of the YFU National Director. The pages have got about 40 visitors a day and YFU receives several enquiries about the exchange programme through this new channel.

2.1.5 Field Work and Public Relations

The main part of my internship though formed the presentation of the YFU programme in the field – at schools, functions and so called ‘careers expos’. This part of the internship required a high level of independence and communication skills. As an intern I was supporting the Student Exchange Advisors (SEA) of YFU who promote the YFU programme all over New Zealand and recruit new exchange students. It is this one-to-one approach that proves to be the most successful in attracting students to go on exchange. SEAs are employed all over New Zealand and are responsible for different sales and marketing regions.

I was working and visiting schools in the Central Region of New Zealand which included the areas Wellington, New Plymouth, Whanganui and Palmerston North. I received a company car to travel to the several areas. A typical school visit would consist of several parts. It started off with making an appointment at the different school a couple weeks in advance. I then coordinated my school visits with my work schedule. At the school I would normally speak in an assembly in front of the whole school. These assemblies are held in most secondary schools once a week. All teachers and students come together and topics regarding the school are discussed here. The size of the assemblies varies greatly from a mere hundred up to a thousand students. I normally appeared as a guest speaker and presented the YFU programme in a short speech.

My speech would take about 5 to 10 minutes and gave the students a first glance of the opportunities of an exchange programme with YFU. Afterwards I was available for the students in a school room for further questions regarding the exchange programme. During my internship I visited about 30 schools in the different areas. I found it very thrilling that this part of my internship was more or less independent work. I received introductory training from SEA Colleen Logue in the first weeks after my arrival but then I worked fully on my own, making appointments at the schools, developing speeches for assemblies and promoting the YFU programme. The company car to travel to all the different regions improved this feeling of independent work even more.

The ‘careers expos’ were another part of this independent work. ‘Careers expos’ are a kind of information fair for secondary students. The ‘careers expos’ take place all over New Zealand and secondary students can have a look at the opportunities they have got after finishing school. Universities, companies and trade organisations present themselves in these expos. The expos are another very important instrument for YFU to attract students to the YFU Exchange Programme. During my internship I attended expos in Christchurch, Wellington, Napier, Palmerston North, Nelson, Dunedin and Invercargill and introduced the YFU Exchange Programme to visitors. The expos normally lasted for 3 days and varied greatly in size. An expo could have 10.000 visitors like in Wellington or a couple hundred like in Nelson. Towards the end of my internship in September I spent a full month travelling from expo to expo. It was another very valuable experience and gave me the opportunity to gather a big amount of practical ideas and insights.

This part of my internship surely was the most exciting and colourful one. Not only did I have the chance to visit and see different parts of New Zealand, but I also had the incredible possibility to work independently as a representative for YFU. Results of the expos and school visits were directly measured and monitored by National Office using incoming enquiries and applications.

2.2 A highly valuable work experience

The value of the internship to my personal experience and education can not be regarded highly enough. Not only did I learn to fulfil different jobs using a foreign language and gaining practical experience, but I also improved my theoretical knowledge completing the Web Project or assisting in advertising. I found all the parts of my internship as I have described above as challenging and satisfying tasks. I enjoyed being integrated into the YFU team after only a short time and being entrusted with different and exciting jobs. The description of the multiple tasks can only give a glance at how diverse the internship was and how much I have learned and experienced during the five months with YFU New Zealand.

3 The experience of a different culture

But it wasn’t only work that made the time a very special one. Living in a different culture and experiencing what life is like in another country contributed to the very positive picture of my internship. I felt fully immerged into New Zealand society and I find it hard today to think of any negative points of my internship. Maybe the general culture within companies would be a slightly negative point. Compared to internships in Europe I experienced the general atmosphere within companies in New Zealand as very relaxed and laid back. This New Zealand attitude is well known all over the world but it doesn’t necessarily make the whole working environment better. It was quite frustrating for me when some simple things just seemed to take forever.

My favourite story has to do with the simply task of changing the fees at the Internet Provider of YFU. It took me 2 months and about 30 (!) phone calls to finally achieve my goal. My contact person at the Internet Provider would not only not call me back, but he would also go on holiday, make promises and immediately forget about them, or simply go for lunch for about six hours. Changing the fees in a fast and uncomplicated manner didn’t seem to occur to him. Well, in the end I got what I wanted, but what a struggle. I did a similar thing only two weeks ago in Germany. It took one hour.

Otherwise working and living in New Zealand was a very pleasant and rewarding experience. Working for an International Student Exchange Organisation made it very easy to get in touch with the people of New Zealand and to get to know the culture and society of this country. With the help of YFU I managed to stay with families throughout New Zealand and this provided a first hand look behind the scenes of the country. I had the chance to take part in Maori cultural activities, I spent some time with a real South Island farming family, and lived with an urban family in Wellington. I didn’t have any trouble finding my way into society and terms like ‘culture shock’ or ‘home sickness’ luckily didn’t apply to me.

4 Personal evaluation of the internship

The internship at YFU New Zealand certainly was an experience that I would not like to miss in the world. My education at the University of Passau as KuWi surely helped me to integrate into New Zealand society more easily and it prepared me for the multiple tasks of the job. The internship required open-mindedness, language skills, communication skills, and cultural understanding. Public Relations skills and some computer knowledge were also incredibly important. All these are attributes that are reflected in my studies at university and I felt well prepared for the work during my internship. The work was taxing but also rewarding and looking back today I am confident to say that each day of my internship in New Zealand was a very unique and exciting one.

The internship at YFU New Zealand surely could be an opportunity for other students as well, and I hope some will find their way to New Zealand in the future. It is just too good of an educational opportunity to be missed.