Rachel Love '17

When Calvin College sophomore Rachel Love started her internship at Bethany Christian Services’ refugee center in September 2014, making phone calls to strangers terrified her. After two semesters of interning there, though, not only is she comfortable speaking on the phone, she speaks with people on other continents, and she does so in French.

Rachel, a Public Health and French double major, has increased her confidence exponentially through her internships. Starting in the medical services department at Bethany, Rachel helped connect refugees with doctors to meet their health needs. When Kristine VanNoord, Bethany’s Program Manager for Refugee Adult and Family Services, was looking for an intern to help refugees work with Department of Human Services (DHS), Rachel’s supervisor enthusiastically recommended her for the promotion.

Rachel’s spring semester internship involved becoming intimately familiar with DHS’ paperwork and systems so she could connect refugees with appropriate services. She became the go-to person for Bethany caseworkers with questions about DHS.

Of her new found self-assurance, Rachel says, “having a supervisor who has confidence in me reassured me that I could have confidence in myself.”

Rachel describes herself as, “not necessarily shy, but definitely quiet.” Her supervisors, however, saw within her an impressive competence and a passion for helping those in need.

Her interest in helping others started young. In high school, Rachel read a book, Priceless, about human trafficking of Russian girls, which inspired in her a strong desire to address the needs of the vulnerable. She was struck by how young women, not unlike herself, could fall into such dire circumstances mainly due to poverty. In response, she and a friend organized school events to inform peers about issues related to trafficking.

Working with refugees at Bethany, Rachel, “gets to see the other side – people who have made it out of bad situations and who have a second chance.”

Not too many sophomores already have a year of internships under their belt. Even fewer have another year’s worth planned out. But Rachel does. This summer, thanks to connections made by VanNoord, Rachel is interning with the Michigan Department of Health and Community Services. And she’ll be interning with the Kent County Department of Health and Community Services for the duration of next school year. She hopes that her senior year will involve experience on the federal level, since she’ll pursue an internship during Calvin’s semester to Washington, DC.

Rachel, a trailing child in a family of four children, with her next closest sibling 13 years her senior, explained, “My siblings all play the part of parents. They give me advice regularly. My brother said that if he could do college over again, he would have pursued more internships. So I followed his sage advice.”

Her parents are on board, too. After telling her dad over the phone about her summer internship plans, her mom picked up the phone and said, “Your dad is beaming. What news did you share with him?”

Rachel is thrilled to be gaining such extensive experience in the field with a variety of perspectives on health issues facing our community. She said that working under VanNoord was an incredible blessing. “Kristine takes time out of her insanely busy schedule to sit down and talk with me, to mentor me.” And the admiration goes both ways. VanNoord confided, “My biggest compliment to Rachel is that I recommended her as an intern to DHS. I hold my relationship with DHS dearly, so that I’m willing to refer Rachel shows how much faith I have in her ability to do the job well.”

Written by Laurie Lemmen, posted May 2015