Busara and Smith College have launched an internship partnership aimed at ensuring equitable access to transformative career opportunities for students. This partnership offers an internship that blends education, real-world experience, and collaboration designed to immerse students in applied research for social impact. They will get the opportunity to explore different areas of applied research in the development sector, working on some of the most pertinent challenges faced by populations that can be addressed with behavioral approaches.
Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion
Many students from the Global South face significant barriers to securing high-value internships that can launch their careers. Often, universities in the Global South lack the funding to support such opportunities, while institutions in the Global North focus primarily on their own students. Smith College, based in Northampton, MA, USA, bridges this gap by sponsoring an equal number of students from the Global North and the Global South to intern with Busara.
“Through this partnership, Smith College is funding Smith students to intern with us and also committing to support a matching number of interns from the Global South.” said Stanley Ngugi, Busara’s Vice President for People.
“This initiative underscores Smith College’s and Busara’s shared dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is also a significant step forward in our mission to develop talent and foster equity in the professional world.”
The first group of interns under the equitable opportunity partnership between Smith College and Busara will be joining Busara at the beginning of June 2024.
About Busara
Busara is a non-profit research and advisory organization with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and offices in India, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Mexico. Our mission is to advance and apply behavioral science in pursuit of poverty alleviation and since our beginning in 2013 have built the world’s largest behavioral science laboratory, and created applied research portfolios in agriculture, health, inclusive finance, governance and education, among others. Along the way, we have become a global leader in behavioral science and serves as an exemplar of mixing science and application to solve problems of equity, access, poverty and opportunity.