This summer, I am working at Reclaim Childhood in Amman, Jordan. Reclaim Childhood is an NGO that builds safe and inclusive spaces for local and refugee girls through using sport as a tool for development and empowerment.

While this is my "Week 1" update, I have been here in Amman working for two weeks so far. My first week involved getting settled, getting to know the six other interns, and a few days of orientation. Additionally, I had the opportunity to attend two trainings, one for the coaches Reclaim Childhood employs and one for the volunteers who are older participants that will spend two days a week as assistant coaches and two days a week as participants. Finally, we closed out the week at a teambuilding event at a house with a pool in a remote area in the north with all of the staff, interns, and coaches.

This past week was the first of three weeks of Reclaim Childhood's flagship programming - summer camp!  There are four sites and this week we got to visit three out of the four. Each week we will rotate through the sites in small groups. On Monday, the U.S. Embassy brought staff and American soccer coaches and players to Mafraq for a coach training. After the coach training, we all went to the Mafraq camp site to implement the new skills and games with the girls on the field.

We also started getting our office tasks -- for the next few weeks, I will be working on a grant report and data entry. Reclaim Childhood's executive director (based in the U.S.) was in Jordan this week and she gave us workshops on things like grant writing, fundraising, and communications.

This week I realized that my Arabic is definitely in need of improvement in order to be able to be a better support to the coaches at camp. Camp is a lot of fun, but a bit of organized chaos and I want to be a useful presence on the field. This upcoming week, I'll be starting Arabic classes at a local language school so that I can improve my communication skills.