Mike Hunter sat in a Manhattan movie theater one afternoon in June, watching “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” with a group of homeless children and thinking, “I’m having a blast.”

That activity was a far cry from Hunter’s job as a district air manager for United Postal Service Inc. in Des Moines, but was intended to serve a greater purpose. His four weeks in UPS’s Community Internship Program exposed him to maximum-security prisons, heroin addicts, homeless shelters and battered women’s shelters, all intended to make him a better manager and a better citizen.

“I’d do it again in a New York minute,” he said.

UPS hopes those experiences will make Hunter and other management-level employees more understanding and compassionate toward the hundreds of employees they supervise. Hunter, who oversees UPS air operations for the state of Iowa, supervises approximately 200 employees from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.

“It has an outcome that you can’t carve out of a workbook or accomplish through a seminar,” said Don Wofford, national program director.

Hunter and seven other UPS managers lived and worked at Henry Street Settlement, an organization on the Lower East Side that uses social service and programming to address the effects of poverty and help families achieve better lives.

“Almost every facet that society has to deal with has been carved out by Henry Street,” Wofford said. UPS also has CIP programs in Chattanooga, Tenn., McAllen, Texas, and San Francisco.   “It’s truly an honor to get involved and become more understanding,” Hunter said, who was apart from his wife, Cathy, and children, Molly, 10, and Sean, 8, while in New York. “The time flew by so you never had a chance to be homesick. As opposed to going someplace on vacation, I didn’t feel guilty.”

Hunter and his colleagues were exposed to conditions and situations he had only dreamed about. They visited with inmates at Sing Sing Prison, a maximum-security correctional facility in Westchester County, north of the Bronx. They brought that experience full circle when they met with advocates for prisoners’ rights and visited a re-entry program for recently released prisoners.  They also visited a methadone and heroin clinic, a place for addicts to seek help and kick their drug habit.

“We did so much, it was just incredible,” Hunter said.   Hunter geared his efforts toward Henry Street Home Care, which provides home care to the elderly, and Recycle a Bicycle, which employs disadvantaged youths.

“They take young adults to a bike shop and show them how to run a business and give them a job,” said Hunter, who spent his time at Recycle a Bicycle constructing tire racks and storage shelves. “We made the place a little safer. The best thing was they were very appreciative. You want to leave a lasting impression.”

Wofford said UPS is hopeful other managers will take away the same awareness, understanding, sensitivity and desire to be involved.

“They are more aware of the conditions that face Americans from all walks of life,” he said, adding that from that awareness comes an understanding of how those conditions come about. In turn, that understanding, Wofford said, leads to greater sensitivity and a desire to become involved.

“When they are immersed for four weeks, it brings a heightened sense of awareness. They become more involved and encourage others to be involved as well,” he said. “We find our interns return home better able to communicate, better able to understand” the situations their employees face.

Wofford said the program, which has provided internship opportunities to UPS managers since 1968, has evolved as society changes, but continues to address the perennial problems facing America.

“You still have poverty and the conditions poverty drives,” he said. “Interns now are more educated, have a more diverse set of experiences. Now maybe it’s more about ‘What can I do to make a difference?’”

Hunter said he returned to work with a greater understanding of the employees he interacts with on at UPS.

“I can’t say I was a stickler before, but one thing I took away is an understanding of what people come to work with and what they have to work with on a daily basis. You can’t automatically write them off.”