Welcoming This Year's Cohort of Interns!
This month, we were grateful to welcome interns to our team to provide invaluable support to our program as they work with participants. Join us as we formally welcome Amber, Ann Elise and Danielle to our team!
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Amber is a second year graduate student at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. Her career interests are in human trafficking, gender-based violence, and criminal justice reform. Amber moved to Chicago from Atlanta where she worked with adolescents in the residential setting. During her time at STOP-IT, Amber will work directly with people who have experienced trafficking. As she starts her internship, she is learning the needs of this client population is looking forward to be able to learn from and build relationships with the various other professionals who work with STOP-IT’s client population. Amber is excited to gain deeper understanding of human trafficking and complex trauma so that she can teach others about the issue. As a case management intern, she will meet with clients, connect them to services, and help them achieve their goals in order to move beyond their trafficking experience. Amber will also be providing support to the STOP-IT hotline and participate in task force subcommittees. While she is here, she hopes to support and advocate for clients safely and respectfully, and build professional relationships to improve client care and community understanding of trafficking.
Ann Elise is a first-year graduate student in the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. She'll spend the next nine months interning at STOP-IT's drop-in center, where she'll help with day-to-day operations, case management, and providing support to participants and those calling the program's 24-hour hotline. Ann Elise is originally from Texas and spent the last five years working in journalism and in nonprofit work with refugees. Ann Elise came to STOP-IT because she's been interested in combating human trafficking and helping survivors since she learned about the issue through a documentary in high school. She plans to focus her social work career on trauma treatment. While she's at STOP-IT, she hopes to learn as much as she can about the best ways to provide support to those coping with the impacts of trauma.
Danielle is a second year MSW graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Danielle is a social worker born and raised in Chicago who comes from a long line of social workers dedicated to providing quality services to vulnerable populations throughout the Chicagoland area. She originally began working with survivors of human trafficking through her job at Heartland Alliance for the past 4 years. With the opportunity of an internship at STOP-IT, Danielle was intrigued by the possibility to learn more about the scope of trafficking, its impacts on development, and the difficulty of navigating systems once impacted by such an event. Now that she has the pleasure of being a part of the STOP IT team, Danielle has been able to learn a tremendous amount, and bring her own skills in assisting vulnerable communities.
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Welcome to the team, all!