Internship

The Old Internship

The Besom ran a year-long internship from mid-September to mid-September for seven years from 2002. Each year, six new interns moved into the bungalow next to the two warehouses from which Besom and FACE to Face operate in Battersea in London. They committed to spending the year living in community with each other and working full-time at The Besom.

The interns spent their days working for The Besom and being trained up in the various different areas of activity there. These areas consisted of co-ordinating the furniture givers and recipients and painting projects; the money-giving department; working with the time-givers in the warehouse; and working with Besom’s daughter organisation, FACE to Face, which assists, in the main, women from the African and Caribbean communities in South London who are on benefits to sort out their finances, start a small business and begin to take their rightful place in their communities.

A core aspect of the internship was the challenge of learning what it means to live in intentional community with the five other interns. The six interns committed to spending two evenings a week together. They were encouraged to explore together what Jesus meant in John 13: 34-35: ‘A new command I give you: Love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,’ and what this could look like in reality.

Running alongside this ongoing challenge was weekly teaching from James Odgers, the founder of The Besom, and from other speakers. Each intern was encouraged to consider their response to poverty across the globe against the backdrop of this question: ‘How shall I live, when 30,000 children die every day of starvation and malnutrition related diseases?’ This question presented itself in various forms throughout the year and provided a context for other issues to be discussed. Some of these were money, stewardship, community, discipleship, relationships, church, vision, calling and social justice - all of which provoke much thought, further questions, debate and inevitably a gradual change in thinking and lifestyle.This internship aimed to provide already strong, committed followers of Jesus with an environment in which they probed further into what God’s call for them might be, particularly within the context of the poor.

The New Internship - February 2012

A new internship starts in February 2012 for a rolling period of up to a year for up to 6 people at a time - they will probably be between about 20 and about 28.  There will be a rather different approach to the Old Internship in that there will be stages in London, Somerset, South Africa and, I hope, Hong Kong. In London, those who come will live in the house next to the Besom and FACE to Face warehouses, become immersed in all that is happening in these ministries and in another that focusses on women of the street and learn about living in intentional community.  The aim of the teaching there will be similar to that of the old internship but there will also be an opportunity to look more broadly at issues of rural poverty and community degradation at the FACE to Face farm in Somerset and then at issues of poverty and injustice in other contexts in South Africa and, I hope, Hong Kong.  For further details please contact James Odgers at  james.odgers@besom.com