Internships

Carolina Nunez ’13

During my PEI summer internship, I worked at the Pan African Global Academy (PAGA) in Oshiyie, Ghana, along with two fellow PEI interns. PAGA was established by Professor Rouse, whose aim was to build an environmentally, socially and financially sustainable high school. In alignment with this philosophy, our goals were to design and implement a wind turbine system on the school grounds to meet the energy demands of the school, and to develop a project-based curriculum for the second-year science program that would allow students to interact with the turbine. Despite the many challenges of the project, we successfully designed a wind turbine system and laid the foundation for its installation, including construction of the turbine’s anchor system, trenches for electrical wiring, and a local shelter for batteries. Furthermore, we were able to interact with a network of Ghanaian sustainable energy professionals. We look forward to the turbine’s imminent installation. In addition, we were able to begin development of the curriculum, identifying several projects that addressed Ghanaian academic standards. Overall, this internship provided me with true insight into the challenges of development work, and I hope to apply my experiences to future work.