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Yale Interns for “Big Easy”
08/10/08 - 11:44 PM
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) - If you asked Jakara Moto, 19, a few months ago what she anticipated from her summer in New Orleans, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “I came with no expectations because I wanted the city to surprise me.”

And before long, it did.

Soon after her arrival in May, the Yale University junior, who is originally from Hawaii and worked with the nonprofit Broadmoor Development Corp. this summer, found herself in love with the Crescent City - and eager to come back for work after graduation.

For many of the other Yale undergraduates that accompanied Moto, the feeling is mutual.

This summer, 24 Yale students and graduates arrived in New Orleans with internships and free housing through the “Bulldogs in the Big Easy” program, the brainchild of Kezia Kamenetz, 21, a rising senior, and Easha Anand, 22, a 2008 graduate.

Kamenetz, a New Orleans native interning at Broadmoor and Councilwoman Stacy Head’s office, and Anand, who spent last summer as an intern at the New Orleans public defender’s office and is now at The Times-Picayune as a reporting intern, were eager to provide a program that would expose more students to the opportunities in New Orleans.

Kamenetz unveiled the plan, which builds off Yale’s similar Bulldog programs throughout the country, at a meeting for alumni in New Orleans and secured more than $10,000 in one night. The program, which is supported through donations as well as the school’s Undergraduate Career Services, has cost more than $30,000.

Both students and employers quickly became interested in the program, said Kamenetz, who had led groups to New Orleans to help gut and rebuild houses.

“We had to turn away a lot of the employers because there are tons of nonprofits that wanted interns that we were able to give them,” Kamenetz said. Liam McKenna of the public defender’s office said the interns, many of whom had never been to New Orleans, bring fresh perspectives to the work.

“Our whole office is built on bringing in people from all over, a young crowd that has that energy and wants to rebuild the city to what it once was, or even better than it was,” said McKenna, who supervised four Yale interns.

Hal Roark, executive director of Broadmoor Development, said the city offers the students chances to tackle large-scale projects that would be off-limits to interns in other cities.

“Truthfully, the projects are way beyond what they should be doing at their age and skill level,” Roark said. “But there’s such a need here that these students can come down and can have these great experiences.”

Moto, one of Roark’s interns, developed a food distribution program, largely on her own. Before the program, Moto had never really considered living and working permanently in the area, she said, but the experience makes her eager to continue program development in the city after she graduates in 2010, she said.

“I feel like I have a stake in this city,” Moto said.

At least four others have extended their stay outside of the program, which ended earlier this month.

Even students who were not completely enthralled by their internships said they are compelled to come back again after graduation, either for graduate school or a job.

Alex Weinstein, 20, who worked at Global Green USA, a nonprofit environmental group, said New Orleans is on his radar for post-graduation plans.

“I don’t really know what I would do here, but in terms of a place to live, I love it,” he said. “I’m definitely seriously thinking of coming here either right after school or later on.”

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