Erika Evatt

Hello everyone, I am Erika Evatt and I am a 2021-2022 Gilman Alumni Ambassador. I completed a virtual internship in Tokyo, Japan during the Summer of 2021.

In my last blog, I gave a brief introduction to my online internship and discussed the friendship I developed with a coworker. In this blog, I want to further explain how winning the Gilman Scholarship has impacted my career.

I was awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship in 2021 and due to COVID restrictions, I decided to do an online internship with a non-profit called YouMeWe located in Tokyo, Japan last May.

“YouMeWe is a Tokyo-based non-profit organization that is solely dedicated to nurturing and supporting local students from institutionalized homes. For a decade, our NPO’s mission is to assist students in becoming fully independent as they reach the age of 18, such as gaining financial literacy.”

My internship was 6 weeks long where I helped from writing short blogs to working with other interns to write a white paper to the Japanese Government. After my 6 weeks at YouMeWe, I decided to extend my time there and now I work as a Volunteer and Recruitment Manager.

I did not know that having an online internship would help me with my career as much as it did. I started my internship 2 days after I graduated from Ohio State University. I was not sure what I really wanted to do in life. All I knew was that I liked Japan and wanted to do something there. This is when I found out about diplomacy. I looked at the requirements for getting a job in diplomacy and saw a master’s degree was required so I applied for graduate school. The only problem was that I did not have a competitive GPA and I did not have enough time to take the GRE. I was worried that I wouldn’t succeed in getting accepted into a graduate school.

In my application, I described working with YouMeWe and how I found my true passion. A few weeks later I was accepted into the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, to pursue a degree in business management.

YouMeWe has allowed me to gain new experiences and these experiences would not have been possible without the help of the Gilman Scholarship. I hope that the Gilman Scholarship can last for many years to come so other students like myself can grow not just professionally, but find their purpose in life.

My name is Erika Evatt, and I’m a Gilman alumni ambassador for the 2021-2022 academic year.

When I was junior attending Ohio State, I wanted to do a yearlong study abroad in Japan for my senior year. In the end, Covid happened and my trip cancelled, but I was provided a different option. I ended up doing an online internship with a non-profit located in Tokyo called YouMeWe NPO. Its mission is to help orphans in Tokyo, the Philippines, and Ghana become financially independent to achieve higher education or to find a job. In addition, they provide educational and mental health services.

The thought of working virtually made me worried. I was worried that I would not make any friends or learn as much. To my surprise, I became close with everyone and this opportunity allowed me to strengthen my Japanese skills to communicate effectively with coworkers and customers, assist with translation, and better understand Japan’s work culture.

The non-profit I worked for was located in Tokyo, but there were many workers from all over the world. I really liked the work I was doing there so after my internship was over, I decided to stay and continue my work there.

My boss helped write a letter of recommendation to graduate school and I am now getting my master’s in business.  I thanked my boss for his help and told him where I was planning to attend. To my surprise, an intern I have been working with also goes to the same school. After moving to my new University, we met up and now hangout regularly.

I am so grateful for my experience. At first I wished I was able to go abroad, but I gained so much knowledge and met so many great individuals. It made me realize that no matter where in the world you are, there are others who share the same passion as you and connecting virtually will allow you to meet those individuals anytime, anywhere.