Brandie at WV Covenant House

After two days of beginning my internship and starting my first full week as the WV Covenant House intern, I began to quickly recognize the immense worth, knowledge, and power that the Covenant House has. My reservations, in hindsight, feels rather ironic and silly because of the knowledge that I have now. I sacrificed so much energy and dedication at Juniata to become a dual-POE in Biochemistry and Public Health Advocacy. My Public Health Advocacy POE is extremely unique in the fact that it calls on values of community engagement and intersectionality- two things that are not commonly found in modern service work. At WV Covenant House, their driving principals revolve around community engagement, intersectionality, client-based service work, and respect and dignity of those experiencing marginalization related to poverty or homelessness. While it feels silly to say from the outside looking in, WV Covenant House truly embodies the concepts of community engagement, intersectionality, an...

The SHECP internship (Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty) is a 9 week internship sponsored by Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. I was very privileged to be given a chance to participate in this very insightful and mentally rigorous program. I was going to be placed with the West Virginia Covenant House in Charleston, West Virginia. The internship runs from 6/2-7/27, with in-person placement beginning on 6/6. I personally was unable to begin my internship until 6/9 after I had finished a retreat for the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. I felt that my time at WVSOM, while still taking away from my contributions to the Covenant House, acclimated me to the culture of West Virginia and its differences from my hometown in Central Pennsylvania. It also showed me the unique, celebratory aspects of West Virginia and how proud people are to be West Virginians. I found that there are a lot of similarities, but also key differences to the way that thes...