Carla Mourelo – My experiences as an intern at Quinoa Bildung

Carla Mourelo | 03. April 2025

About me

I’m Carla, a 20-year-old Spanish girl from Barcelona. I’m a marketing student who decided to come to the capital of Germany to do her internship and open new doors and opportunities.

Now that my experience here is coming to an end, I would like to take a look back to remember what these months in Berlin have been like and above all, everything I have learned during my internship at Quinoa.

 

 

My start at Quinoa

When Quinoa Bildung first offered me the opportunity to come to work with them, it was a bit confusing for me to understand their concept, as I had never seen a similar school before.

Within days of arriving and joining the Quinoa team, I began to understand what their goal was and what they were working for: to offer students with fewer opportunities a good education and the support and guidance needed to successfully complete their studies.

It was surprising for me to see the close relationship between teachers and students. Accustomed to an education system in which teachers are dedicated solely to teaching subjects, I saw how these teachers cared about their students‘ personal lives and engaged in conversations beyond just talking about grades.

It was easy to realize this for different reasons; here, teachers and students not only share time in the classroom, but also outside. At lunchtime, they share a table and, in this way, they make no difference between them. In the breaks, instead of running away from their teachers, the students approach them to chat and ask for some advice.

 

My tasks at Quinoa

Here at Quinoa, my tasks have been marketing-related; the main things I have been doing are content design for internal and external communication and creating content for social media. One of my projects has been „Get to know Quinoa in 5 days“, it consists of 5 different posts for Instagram and Facebook in which I show people interesting facts about the school so that they can get to know us better. This idea came to me at the school’s open doors day, seeing how families were interested in knowing more about Quinoa, I thought it would be a good idea to also offer online information about us.

But for me, the most important part has been adapting all these creations to the values of the organisation, and for that, I’ve been working with the team and with the students as well.

Two impressions of my content series „Get to know Quinoa in 5 days“:

 

 

Getting to know the students

At the beginning of my internship, I had the opportunity to go bowling with one of the courses. Even though my bowling skills are not good, it was a good experience because I got to know the students more; they tried to talk to me and were very curious to meet me and know what I do at Quinoa.

Weeks later, I was able to introduce myself to another class. One of the class teachers wanted me to talk to the students about who I am. The students were very curious and interacted a lot with me, it was interesting for them to meet someone from another country who speaks another language.

Another of the moments I was able to share with the students was crafting decoration for Ramadan. This is a very important month for the students and being able to help them with the decorations while sharing information about our cultures was very interesting for me, not only to learn from them but also to see their enthusiasm and desire to learn about my culture.

Two impressions of crafting decoration for Ramadan:

   

Since then the students have been more and more friendly with me, they say hi to me and talk to me about different topics, interests about music, to teach them some words in Spanish, to know a little bit more about me and my country…

It has been very nice for me to be in a country different from mine and seeing how the students have welcomed me, how they have been kind to me, and how they have been interested in getting to know me and learning about me.

 

Learnings

From this experience in Berlin, I have learned a lot, not only about marketing, but also about the city. Although it has been difficult to get used to the cold, the vibes of the city are very special and I have been able to enjoy a lot of its monuments, restaurants, people,… I have not only been able to enjoy it myself, but also to share it with my family and friends who have come to visit me during these 3 months.

Without a doubt, it is an experience that I will remember all my life, and that has helped me to expand my knowledge of marketing and to grow as a person.