This month we welcome a fresh face to the CSIE team as our summer intern Rishona Ruegg-Morrison begins her month with us!

The internship involves a variety of tasks that work to offer our intern a true and exciting glimpse into working for the charity sector. She has already hit the ground running and is reading and working on important CSIE work.

Rishona is an undergraduate studying Law at the University of Bristol and is participating in the university’s COVID-19 Small and Medium Enterprises programme. This scheme enables undergraduates to work with organisations such as CSIE by paying the student’s salary for the month they are with us.

Rishona speaks fondly of her own school experiences, which she states informed her views on inclusive education. She recalled her and her peers having to travel to a neighbouring park for her P.E. lessons as the school’s field was not accessible to all. Her school was of the view that until the school’s field was accessible to all, to disabled and non-disabled children alike, no pupil could use the facilities. It was not until Year 9, when a ramp was installed to improve access to the school’s field, when she and her peers began to have her P.E. lessons on school grounds.

This shaped her view and understanding of what ‘inclusion’ is and means. It is ensuring that everyone has equal opportunities, not bound by the individual characteristics or circumstances they find themselves to have or be in. 

We are very excited to begin working with Rishona, who is passionate to make education more inclusive, very much like her school, and extend much gratitude to the University of Bristol for making this internship possible.