Freeplay Foundation - Emily Freedman

Emily Freedman

EFreed01@gmail.com

Major: Community Health and Child Development Major

Tufts program & expected graduate year:  Liberal Arts graduated May 2009

I will be interning at the Freeplay Foundation in London, a Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship member organization, with 2 friends from the EPIIC program. I will be interning for the CEO as well as working alongside the Project Manager and Digital Marketing and Online Communication Manger to support the organization’s work from their London headquarters.

I got involved at the IGL by taking EPIIC in 2008-2009, the Global Cities year. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and learned a lot, and decided to apply for EMPOWER along with 2 of my EPIIC peers to explore rural issues, the opposite of what we had studied so intensely during EPIIC. I wanted to see ‘the flip side of the coin’, so to speak. We decided to intern at the Freeplay Foundation, which bring solar powered and wind-up radios and flashlights to Africa, because many of its projects take place in rural areas, but it also applies many of the principles we studied with regards to cities, including the issue of sustainability.

A highlight of my internship was working with the Project Manager to do background research for future projects. For example, I was able to develop a baseline survey for a pending women’s radio and flashlight project in Kenya. This was interesting for me because, based on the past project reports I had read and the holes in the existing research with regards to off-grid lighting in the country and region, I was able to really think about what information would be central in making the project have the biggest possible impact on the lives of the women it reaches.