I will always look back at the time I spent in Cape Town as one of the most eye-opening and exciting experiences I have had to date. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at first but my internship in introduced me to a sector and concepts I’m not sure I would have been exposed to anywhere else. Over the course of three months I worked with an organisation that mentored and incubated social enterprises. In short, I worked with budding entrepreneurs who ran businesses with the aim of making profit but also having a positive social impact. From day one, I hit the ground running and was tasked with deliverables on a number of projects. One day I would help an entrepreneur write a business plan, another I would be developing a curriculum on social entrepreneurship and the day after I would be teaching modules that I helped write. I have a background in finance but I often found myself needing to be flexible and prepared to work on whatever projects needed the attention at the time, and I often had a major say in what direction we took certain projects. Sometimes it was overwhelming, but being out of my comfort zone and experiencing something new is what made the entire experience all the more worthwhile. My eyes were opened to a new way of tackling poverty reduction and social enterprise is a field I will be interested in and hopefully be involved in for a long time. Eimear was patient and thorough in helping me find the right internship and I can’t thank her enough for that. Aside from organising the internship, Connect-123 helped with a number of things making it easy for me to enjoy everything that Cape Town had to offer. Getting to know fellow interns and volunteers was probably the highlight of my stay – in my few months in South Africa I made a number of friends and built a network of like-minded people who I am sure I will cross paths with in the future, both professionally and socially. I am sure I will look back on this experience with not only a sense of achievement, but with memories of all the great people I met and had a chance to work with.