The Extraordinary Internship
It is a long way to go in developing environmental education in Hong Kong, and this can hardly be possible with OWLHK alone. Therefore, since our establishment, OWLHK has been committed to training new forces in the future prospects. There are ten completed sessions in the OWLHK internship program so far, with more than 60 tertiary students participating. The internship program allows tertiary students to discover concepts, skills, and practical methods of environmental education through sharing theories and experiences, observing lessons, and forming study groups. Interns can also communicate with other environmental education and conservation groups through OWLHK, so to develop their social networks to prepare for future careers. Many of OWLHK's full-time employees used to be an intern here, and at present, five of OWLHK's ten employees participated in the internship program!
Speaking of internships as tertiary students, many may recall dull experience trapped in cubicles, dealing with cumbersome clerical affairs in the beautiful summer. Yet, have you ever imagined the nature to be a workplace for tertiary interns? The vibrant woods and gurgling rivers are the ‘offices’ of our interns - this is exactly our kind of Work From Hill! For instance, 2021 summer internship program had more than half of the working hours contributed from outdoor work, which varied from guiding outdoor educational activities, assisting in ecological surveys, to participating in outdoor filming.
What are the background requirements to enrol in the OWLHK internship program? In fact, you just have to be interested and enthusiastic about environmental education! Among the previous interns, 40% were tertiary students from non-biological related disciplines. Regardless of the background from the Department of Computer Science or Landscape Studies, all it matters is the passion to try and showcase their strengths in the internship program, thus contributing to environmental education.
In order to fully exert their talents, recent sessions of interns are divided into different teams, including the education team, design team, and research team, so that specialized tasks can be experienced based on different interns’ skill set. The OWLHK internship program provides resources and platforms for interns to practice their thoughts and enact their beliefs. In various aspects, interns can manifest their knowledge and inspirations they have gained outdoors, and practice the concepts in the designing environmental education projects. Not only can it bring valuable and irreplaceable experience, it can also input innovative ideas of the new era to the environmental education community!
Internship as the Beginning of EE Career
‘Law of the Forest’, which integrates environmental education into board games, was one of the most remarkable achievements from the OWLHK internship program. Tom, the game designer, was the first batch of interns. Unlike other environmental organizations where he had reported to previously, he believed that OWLHK's internship offers high degree of freedom and flexibility to unleash new ideas.
Dating back to the job division stage during the internship, Tom demonstrated immense interests in producing a local board game featuring environmental education with his experiences in board gaming since secondary education. Bound to advocate local forest ecology, Tom conceived the gaming concept and contemplated the gameplay regulations to create the prototype of ‘Law of the Forest’. With the support of the OWLHK team, ‘Law of the Forest’ became one of OWLHK's most popular environmental education projects in shortly a year.
Tom, who is currently in charge of bird research at the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society (HKBWS), said: "The previous board game designing experience has directly enriched my current work content!" It turned out that the colleagues from the HKBWS learnt about his relevant experience in designing board game, and ‘cross-functionally’ invited Tom to participate in designing a new one. Tom was surprised that the task completed several years ago as an intern at OWLHK could open up new opportunities to himself.
Impeded by the epidemic in previous years, it is extravagant to ask for outdoor and face-to-face environmental education. In order to adapt to such circumstances, one of the tasks for interns was being group tutors for online environmental education courses. 2021 intern, Melody, found that despite outdoor environmental education is indispensable, high-quality online teaching is a good temporal alternative under the constraints. In due course, Melody collaborated with other interns to design a series of interactive games for an online class on Hong Kong Forest Ecology, where students can be engaged readily behind their gadgets.
Today, Melody has co-founded Little Woods Nature Education with a few classmates and fully devoted herself to nature education. Speaking of how the internship at OWLHK has inspired her current work, she mentioned the regular meetings of the internship program. "To me, the concepts of environmental education and experience shared in regular intern meetings are constant reminders." The numerous sharing enlightened Melody to reflect on the professionalism on educational concepts and skills underlaid in environmental education despite being a student from ecological backgrounds. Internship experience at OWLHK thus offers comprehensive opportunities to fill in the gaps in tertiary education to equip her with expertise in nature education.
