Externships

Morgan Foster's love of nature is connected to childhood memories—like the comforting smell of saltwater wafting through the open windows of her parents' car as they approached Virginia's Buckroe Beach near where her mother was born and raised. For much of the 20th century, Buckroe Beach was one of the only coastal recreation areas open to the local African-American community.

Morgan earned a degree in environmental sciences and a double minor in politics and English from the University of Virginia. She is working on a Masters in natural resources at Virginia Tech. She participated in the externship program in 2022. Her project—engaging with local people to learn about the past, present and future of Buckroe Beach—was inspired by her family's connection to the area. "Talking about Black history is important to me in the conservation space," she says. "Sometimes our stories aren't necessarily highlighted, and so I decided to tell this conservation story from a cultural standpoint."

Today, Morgan works full-time with TNC, coordinating with the impact finance and markets team to support conservation finance, corporate engagement and carbon markets projects. According to Morgan, "I want the things that I work on and the projects that I'm a part of to be accessible to all because conservation should be accessible to all."

The Chocó region in western Colombia is rich with untouched rainforests, tropical islands and mangroves, but today, excessive amounts of marine plastic threaten both natural habitats and wildlife. Tomás Pinzon studied these issues throughout the course of his externship and, as part of his final project, presented solutions that included outreach and education. In the summer of 2022, he received seed funding to bring his vision to life through the Festival del Mar–the Festival of the Ocean–in the remote town of El Valle, which is located in the Chocó approximately 100 miles west of Medellin.

Results: Approximately 60 students took part in the first Festival del Mar event, which communicated the importance of taking action for the ocean

“For me this was a dream come true, literally. It was very challenging, very hard at times, but I always had the motivation to continue to tackle the challenges.”

Through the National Geographic Society and The Nature Conservancy’s cutting-edge externship program, global youth are learning about the challenges facing our world and forging new ways to help solve them. The program partners secure support to offer this seed funding, and then experts from both organizations review applications through a rigorous selection process. Once selected, each extern receives $2,000 in seed funding to help them put their ideas to work on the ground—with incredible results.

Since the fall of 2021, externs have been using the seed funds to execute their vision on the ground, show proof of concept and leverage their real-world results for additional funding that will carry their work even further.