ProjeKt Inspire Foundation Internship

Organization: ProjeKt Inspire Foundation
Location: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with program travel to Tanga and, where feasible, one rural site
Duration: January 4-22, 2027 
Open Positions: 2 (Harvard College students only)
Funding: Unpaid Internship; Undergraduates: Travel and Living stipend provided by CAS to cover the cost of the program. Graduate Students: Must secure their own funding for the program. 
Application Deadline: October 15, 2026 

About ProjeKt Inspire

ProjeKt Inspire Foundation is a Tanzanian organization making STEM education accessible to children aged 3 to 14 through hands-on, project-based learning. We run eight STEM Parks — physical learning spaces with interactive exhibits and running programs — across mainland Tanzania and the islands, most of them embedded within the public education system under an MOU with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and PO-RALG. Rather than operate in parallel to government, we train local teachers to run the programs themselves.

Our two largest sites are in Dar es Salaam, which is urban and serves as our headquarters, and Tanga, which is peri-urban and our longest-established centre. Each is staffed by a team of eight to ten. Our regional sites in Kigoma, Songwe and Tabora are more rural and community-embedded. We also run the Digi Lab, a mobile STEM unit carried by motorcycle with laptops and projectors, which takes programming to schools beyond the reach of a fixed centre.

The Internship

This is a short, intensive placement built around two strands. The first is common to every intern: field experience and program delivery, working directly with children alongside our facilitators, in our centers and in partner schools. The second is a focus area you choose with us before you travel, matched to what you are studying and what you want to get better at.

We hold introductory calls with selected students to agree that focus area. You do not need to arrive with expertise in any of it — what matters more is curiosity and a willingness to look hard at how we work. We have been immersed in this for a long time and find it difficult to see it as an outsider does, so a student asking obvious questions is genuinely useful to us.

Focus areas — choose one with us

• Communication and storytelling — how we present our work to supporters, partners and funders outside Tanzania: impact stories, newsletters, social content, photography and video.
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning — reviewing how we currently collect data on our programmes, and where the gaps are between what we measure and what we claim.
• Impact analysis — working with our existing data, including our alumni tracer study, to understand what happens to young people after they pass through our programmes.
• Theory of change — stress-testing the logic that connects our activities to the outcomes we say we produce, and where that logic is thin or untested.
• Business model and sustainability — examining how our commercial arm supports the foundation’s work, and how the model could be strengthened.
• Curriculum and learning design — working within our eight strands of learning to design, test and document new project-based activities.

These are not exhaustive. If you are studying something adjacent and can see a project in it, propose it — we would rather shape the placement around a student’s genuine interest than force a fit.

Three Week Structure

• Week 1: Orientation and Field Immersion - Arrival, safety and cultural orientation, introductory Swahili with the team. Observe and then co-deliver sessions at the Dar es Salaam STEM Park and in partner schools. Meet facilitators and understand the eight strands of learning that anchor our curriculum. 
• Week 2: Program Delivery and Travel - Co-plan and co-deliver hands-on project-based sessions, working alongside a PIF facilitator. Assist with the preparation of activity materials and take-home experiment kits. Travel to Tanga or join a Digi Lab mobile outreach run. 
• Week 3: Focus Area and Synthesis - Concentrate on your chosen focus area, working with the relevant part of our team, and produce agreed deliverables. Present a short closing reflection and set of recommendations to the PIF team before departure. 

What you will do

• Observe, then co-deliver, hands-on STEM sessions with children aged 3 to 14, at our centers and in partner schools
• Help prepare activity materials and assemble take-home experiment kits
• Contribute ideas to the design of project-based activities, working within our eight strands of learning framework
• Travel with our team to a second site — Tanga, or a Digi Lab mobile outreach run — to see delivery in a different setting
• Work on your chosen focus area alongside the relevant part of our team — communications, programmes, monitoring and evaluation, or the commercial arm
• Where the focus area involves fieldwork or storytelling, capture material from the field with appropriate consent

Expected deliverables

By the end of the placement we ask each intern to produce:

• One substantive output in your focus area, agreed with us before you travel. For a communications focus that might be three to five impact stories or a newsletter draft; for monitoring and evaluation, a review of our current data collection with recommendations; for theory of change, a revised diagram and a note on its weakest assumptions.
• One activity or session plan, either adapted from our existing curriculum or newly designed, tested with children during the placement
• A closing memo of two to three pages: what you observed, what worked, and specific recommendations for how PIF could improve its programming or its external communication
• A short presentation of that memo to the PIF team before departure