Recruiter Whitney O’Brien stopped at Taylor to speak about the possibilities of Taylor students interning at Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian aid organization. O’Brien works at Samaritan’s Purse’s Campus Relations team, travelling to different universities and telling of the work the organization does.
Samaritan’s Purse is an international, interdenominational aid organization that serves crisis areas around the globe, seeking to use humanitarian aid to spread the gospel. The organization takes inspiration from the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which conventional religious piety is discouraged in favor of tangible expressions of love, O’Brien said.
“If we saw a man on the side of the road, we aren’t going to stop and say ‘Jesus loves you’ and then keep walking,” O’Brien said. “What we do is we take the man, bandage up his wounds, take him to shelter, we bring him food, and then we tell him about the name of Jesus and what inspired the help that we bring him.”
Samaritan’s Purse runs programs that seek to quickly respond to natural disasters and provide food, water and medical care to those suffering. The charity operates an emergency field hospital that can be set up anywhere in the world within 36 hours. Perhaps their most famous program, though, is Operation Christmas Child, which sends shoeboxes full of necessities and gifts to children in need across the globe.
Samaritan's Purse offers internships in several fields, such as communications, finance and human resources. They are a large organization with many chances to serve, O’Brien said.
Their internships are paid, O'Brien said. The organization helps with housing, both domestically and internationally, and with food costs to reduce the financial strain on interns.
O’Brien emphasized the hands-on nature of the communications internship and the active role interns play in selecting material most impactful to the reader.
“What a lot of our writing interns get to be a part of is, they get to plan content, they get to strategize, they get to write content, edit it, and see it published on our website,” O’Brien said. “So, very awesome opportunities.”
Communication interns are also given the chance to travel internationally, to meet with the recipients of Samaritan’s Purse aid, hear their stories and pass them on to Samaritan’s Purse donors. Such work is vital to the organization, O’Brien said, as Samaritan’s Purse is 90-95% donor funded.
“Those stories and those print materials, online and print, are incredibly important, because that is sharing the work of Samaritan’s Purse,” O’Brien said. “Getting to read about what the Lord is doing is not only an encouragement to individuals, but it could encourage them to pray, and to donate so we can continue to do the work that we’re doing through their monetary support.”
O’Brien started work at Samaritan’s Purse through an internship. After hearing about the organization from a friend, she applied for an internship her junior year and was rejected. Nonetheless feeling the Lord calling her to that same internship, she applied again senior year.
“It gets to be February of my senior year and I still haven’t heard anything back.” O’Brien said. “I said ‘Father, please help me. I trust you.’ And one day I got an interview from Samaritan’s Purse saying, ‘We would love to interview you.’ And so I interviewed them and it went really well.”
O’Brien worked in the HR department, where she had the opportunity to sit with the different teams in the department and build a training manual for new HR employees. This experience trained her well for her eventual hiring at Samaritan’s Purse and influenced her choice to work on the Campus Relations team.
One of the major benefits of working at Samaritan’s Purse, is the Christian focus of the aid organization, O’Brien said.
“All of our staff, all of our interns, all of our apprentices are born again believers. Our goal is to share the gospel, so we don’t want to lose focus. We don’t want to drift from that mission of being a gospel-centered organization.”
Whitney O’Brien may be contacted at wobrien@samaritan.org, or by phone at 828-588-2042.
