¡SpainWorks! provides UW students the opportunity to work, live, and learn in León, Spain during winter quarter and is offered through a partnership with the UW León Center, UW Study Abroad, and the UW Career & Internship Center. Selected students will live with a local family, intern for a local organization, and immerse themselves fully in all León has to offer.
We anticipate offering 3 types of internships:
Social Media
Be part of a communication team, with an emphasis on social media. This internship will be hosted by one of these two organizations: 1) An entrepreneurial international organization at the University of León that is re-imagining and designing university-level education as part of multi-nation project, or 2) The office of the mayor of León, Spain, which has an ambitious agenda to create a vibrant “smart” city and the communication team focuses on a wide array of city issues. An internship in either organization would involve challenging and interesting work in social media in a situation with good mentorship. Additionally, the university office is focusing a lot on podcasts and content creation. Projects will be quite diverse, but could include monitoring existing social media outlets, and creating content for those outlets as well as helping with a wide array of media-related projects in each organization.
Intermediate to advanced Spanish proficiency is needed to intern at the university and fluency is needed to intern at the mayor’s office. A background and/or experience in media and communication and social media, in particular, would be especially useful for both opportunities.
Education and immigrants
Join the education and immigrant support team at a León based organization that reaches Spanish to immigrants. Intermediate to advanced Spanish proficiency needed. Background in Education, or in teaching a second language, would be useful but not required. Many of the immigrants speak some English, so projects/tasks could include preparation of materials (in English, Spanish) for an important nationality exam, as well as assisting Spanish instruction staff.
Camino de Santiago
Join the team at a León-based organization that provides support to pilgrims who are following the Camino de Santiago (a pilgrimage route dating back more than a thousand years, with tens of thousands of pilgrims from around the world coming through León annually). The Camino de Santiago has a rich and long religious and cultural history.
The association draws on the work of many volunteers who help with a wide variety of projects, including creation of publications on behalf of the association, development of guides and information resources in English and Spanish for pilgrims, interface with pilgrims needing information, maintenance of a small library, maintenance of the Camino trail in the province of León, hosting an annual concert, a film festival and a photography exhibition.
Advanced Spanish proficiency is required. An understanding of the importance of the Camino – and of its history and culture — would be valuable for any intern.
Students who meet the following criteria are eligible to apply for the scholarship:
- Enrolled undergraduate student at UW-Seattle in good academic standing.
- Strong and clear interest in conducting an internship in León, Spain during winter quarter.
- Must be eligible for international travel.
- Must have intermediate fluency in Spanish (for example, completed Spanish 301 or equivalent).
- Preference will be given to applicants who have studied or traveled abroad previously or are familiar with living and working in Spain.
Applications will be accepted April 1 to May 1.Complete the application Google Form which includes the following:
- Essay question about your interest in conducting an internship in León, Spain and how that relates to your longer-term career goals.
- Essay question about which of the available internships you are interested and why.
- Essay question about your familiarity with the Spanish language.
- Essay question about your experience with traveling or living outside the U.S.
- Essay question about how conducting an internship abroad during winter quarter would affect your academic trajectory.
- Current resume
- Unofficial transcript
All applicants will be notified in May 2022 of their application status.
