During my internship, I worked with Ajeec-Nisped’s Knowledge Center in Be’er Sheva, Israel. There, I learned how to manage a book writing and publishing project from start to finish, together with gaining knowledge about Bedouin society and how to adapt key mental wellness concepts to the needs of this community. Furthermore, my experience with Ajeec-Nisped taught me how to take a concept for a social business and turn it into a practical plan.
I interned with the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) in Tel Aviv, a non-profit organization founded by refugees and Israeli citizens to assist, support, and empower refugees and asylum seekers in Israel; this was an excellent experience to learn and expand upon many transferable skills in the field of community development.
In my internship at IsraAID HQ, I worked in organizational strengthening processes and projects. My main takeaways from the internship are experiencing the challenges of implementing extensive participatory approaches, understanding how necessary and beneficial they are; and learning about the difficulties of organizational growth and field professionalization, alongside the implementation of development programs and emergency responses.
I conducted my internship at the High Atlas Foundation, based in Marrakech, Morocco. I will take with me the experience in the field that relates to the tensions between social change and self-empowerment; in particular, how to combine the vocabulary and methodologies used in social change and critical approaches with the methodologies of self-empowerment.
With the understanding of cultural similarities between Nepal and India, I chose to pursue my internship with Restless Development in Nepal, an INGO that aims to bring young people to the decision-making table across areas of civic participation, livelihood, and sexual and reproductive health. I contributed to the curriculum design and implementation of a project called Zero Tolerance and created a procedure to sensitively handle cases of violence.
During the internship component of the Glocal program, I interned with Sidreh Lakiya. Learning about the organization’s social business, Bedouin culture, and the struggles that Bedouin women go through in Israel, also allowed me to learn a lot and to contribute to the mission of Sidreh.
During my internship, I learned a lot about the African asylum-seeking community in Israel, and migration more generally, through different angles, allowing me to develop a broader understanding of this complex issue. One of the main lessons I take from GLOCAL is that whatever cause or population we choose to work with, we need to educate ourselves in every aspect related to it.
During my internship with Kayan, I learned about developing gender-based projects and activities with women and youth. I also learned about how to conduct needs assessments, evaluations, training, building and implementing a campaign, interacting with the community and women, building gender-based projects, and about the organization's structure and how different organizations work together.
During the internship component of the Glocal program, I interned with Kuchinate - an arts-based economic and psychosocial collective for African asylum-seeking women. I learned that the NGO world is often in survival mode, and thus has difficulties in planning its long-term goals. One can often find the key solution for the different problems that come up within the community, as they hold a diversity of skills, human wealth, and useful knowledge.
I conducted my internship in Lima, Peru with Ocupa Tu Calle, a local organization seeking to reduce inequality of access to quality public spaces through the recovery of unused and abandoned spaces, through participatory, small-scale community urban interventions. Along with my work in the field of urban public space, I also learned about additional challenges of the city's residents, related to other fields such as migration, environment, poverty, and crime.
As an experienced architect and urban planner with a special interest in spatial justice, I conducted my internship with two affiliated organizations of SDI which are supporting shack and slum dwellers in Namibia and Kenya. In Namibia, I worked with the local organization, Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG), which is supporting the shack dwellers federation of Namibia and was part of the Community Land Information Program (CLIP).
During the four months of my internship in Sierra Leone, I had the opportunity to develop several manuals regarding livelihood and life-skills training, work closely with local staff on project managing and development, support donor relations and partners cultivation, and experience the implementation of participatory approaches through community engagement methods.
During my internship, I gained a better understanding of international advocacy and how local events impact the international platform, as well as how to use this as a tool for development.
A lot of people told me that the Hebrew University was the best university in Israel. The professors are incredibly accessible. In terms of classes, there’s great discussion – they really want to involve you. It’s a really good environment to learn in.
For me, the program turned out to be super-practical - I literally learned about a theory on a Monday and implemented it in my community on the next Thursday. Moreover, it is both diverse (people from at least 10 nations and many different professional backgrounds) and very personal (there’s always someone there to listen to your request or problem, and to figure it out together with you).
