Internship at Street Child in the continental Europe headquarters’ office
in Barcelona, Spain.
Written By: Marina López Rodríguez Student Number: S3292630
Internship Coordinator: Chamutal Afek-Eitam
MA. International Security UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I: Introduction……….3
Nature and Structure Street Child………..3
Motivations……….3
Preparation Process and Expectations of the Placement ……….3
Chapter II: My Tasks……….4
Registration of Fundación Street Child España ………..4
Trust and Foundations………..5
Partnerships ………..7
Volunteers’ coordinator………..………10
Street Child Spain social media………11
Street Child Spain webpage……….………11
Sierra Leone Marathon (SLM) and West Africa Cycle Challenge (WACC).…11 Local events……….12
Trainings and Mentoring……….13
Board Meetings ………..………14
Weekly Tasks………14
Chapter III: Evaluation of the internship………..15
Personal Development and Learnings……….15
CHAPTER I: Introduction
From the 23rd of October 2017 until the 21st of April 2018 I did my internship at Street Child at the continental Europe headquarters' office in Barcelona, Spain. I was a Street Child intern ultimately dedicated to the growth and settlement of Street Child Spain. In this first chapter I will briefly run through the nature and structure of the charity and then I will move onto my motivations, preparation for it and my expectations of the internship.
Nature and Structure of Street Child.
Street Child Spain is a charity in the process of getting registered and along the other European branches, they were set up following the launch of Street Child UK in 2008. Therefore Street Child is composed of various fundraising and implementers entities that form a global network.
Street Child UK, the first Street Child entity ever to exist, started in Sierra Leone in 2008 working with a small number of street children. Since then the Street Child network have helped over 100.000 children to go back to school and enabled thousands of families to generate sustainable incomes so that their children can stay in education. Today, Street Child works in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
Motivations
Since I first read about child soldiers when I was 16, I had always been interested in its research because of the atrocities human beings can do and how can anyone bring back a child that has been through hell to a stable and peaceful reality and set of mind. Due to my interest, I focused on child soldiers in Sierra Leone in my bachelor’s dissertation, however I never had the chance to do field research or work of this issue in Sierra Leone. I knew I wanted to do my internship at an NGO because I wanted to experience and learn the inside job of a charity. Moreover when I first came across Street Child, I found it extremely interesting as it was a well established NGO in Sierra Leone with plenty of experience in educational projects with children and so once I found Street Child I knew I wanted to do my internship with them.
Preparation Process and Expectations of the Placement
After passing all my modules of my master’s degree, and after completing the summer school at the University of Groningen on illicit trade, I moved back to
Barcelona with my family, where I am originally from. My plan was to start with my thesis whilst applying for internships at the same time, I knew that in the worse case scenario where I did not get accepted in any organization, I could take another module at RUG instead of doing a placement, although what I really wanted to do was an internship at an NGO. Once I found the internship opportunity at Street Child, I applied via online to the London office as I never saw any open internship position at the Barcelona office. Nevertheless, not happy with this, I went to the office in Barcelona and asked them about any position I could apply for in that office. Once I was there, they told me to send an email with my CV and a motivational letter to one of their emails, however I already took a printed version of my CV and my motivational letter with me that day as I knew it was not going to hurt, so I left it there with them that day, and again I sent an email that same afternoon with the same documents to the email address they gave me that morning. On the same week they replied saying that at that time they did not have any positions available, however they were going to further check with the London office just in case. On Monday of the following week, I got an email from who would become my manager in the near future, explaining how after talking about it, they opened a position for myself as a Street Child Spain intern even though Street Child Spain was not officially registered yet, but he also stated that my profile looked very interesting to them at the time.
Before this placement, I never had any experience working for an NGO doing office job, therefore my expectations were not very concrete. However I knew that what I wanted to do was to learn how everything works, why it works the way it does and most importantly about the projects Street Child carries out in the field. Additionally, in the next section I will explain the main tasks I was assigned to, and I will try to summarize briefly my feelings on each one of them before reaching my conclusion and evaluation of the internship, however throughout the next section I will also explain if my expectations were being met with every task I had to do.
CHAPTER II: My tasks
Registration of Fundación Street Child España
The reason I’m starting with this one as my main task is because it is the one that has been the most challenging throughout my internship, not only the carry out of itself but because it affected every single other area I was involved with. When I first started being an intern at Street Child I was the first local intern in the Barcelona office, therefore there was no language barrier at all and I knew the city by heart as I grew up there, hence getting around with local companies and understanding local law terms was easier for me.
The registration process started in Street Child Spain in December of 2016, however it wasn’t until I started working on it when the process started to move forward. It required a lot of preparation from my side, to understand the legal terms and the legal forms that needed to be filled in in order to get registered. I received help from a local volunteer that worked as an accountant, in order to prepare the annual budget plan the ministry needed to have to approve the request to get registered. Among all the forms that we needed to fill in, we had to prepare several others such as the annual budget plan, the board meeting agreement, the UK board resolution indicated they were going to be the funders of the entity and the action plan for the upcoming year of projects that Street Child Spain was planning on helping to fund. All the preparation of these papers was up to me as I knew best how to, so I was in charge of choosing every project we would prepare for the ministry.
This task was of extreme importance and my manager gave priority to this over any other task I had. In my opinion it had to be this way as I felt things were being very disorganized until that point. When it came to reporting back to the board members on the registration process, some of them could not believe how long it was taking for this to move forward, however my main feedback on it was that it wasn’t until I started working on it when the registration was happening properly. Once they received this feedback, they accepted their responsibility and appreciated the great amount of time I was dedicating to it.
Although this topic is not completely related to my field of study, I enjoyed knowing the insights of how getting an NGO registered worked in Spain, and the great amount of paperwork that needs to be done for it. I appreciated every single proof of everything they needed to have in order to legitimize the work of the NGO and to check very cautiously every detail on how the money was going to be transferred to avoid money laundering.
This whole process therefore taught me how hard NGOs have to work to become a recognized entity and to legitimize the great work carried out in the field. Before I finished my internship, I made sure every single paper and proof was sent out to the notary and then to the registry, moreover my expectations on this for the future is that Fundación Street Child España will be a registered charity in 2 months time from now on.
Trust and Foundations
Trust and foundations, also known as T&F, was the biggest focus we had as interns in the charity. In the first job description, it explained how we should spend about 50-60% of our time dedicated to T&F. The reason to be is that this area is
the one that can bring the biggest amounts of money to the charity. T&F consists of writing application on projects that Street Child carries out in the field that still need funding in order to be completed, such as “Girls Speak Out” in Sierra Leona and Liberia or “Brick Kilns” in Nepal. Nevertheless, the actual writing is not the hard part but the research is. An exhaustive research needs to be conducted before any application can be sent out, hence a very detailed database in eTapestry can be constructed.
My job was to investigate any trust or foundation that have similar vision and mission as Street Child. In order to do so, I had to examine whether those I found, were the ones that were pledging money to charities in the form of grants to their projects, or were actually foundations just like Street Child that apply for grants. The interns should bare in mind however, that this research is conducted by any entity similar to Street Child, hence all of them will apply to the most famous calls for grants from big foundations such as bank trusts. Therefore, the research needs to go into extreme detail so as to find family grants, awards or foundation that are not advertised nor famous.
Since the beginning of the job, I was asked to submit 10 applications, nonetheless any application under 20k would count as one and any application over 20k would count as two because the amount of work grew significantly. Due to the fact that Fundación Street Child España was still being registered as a foundation, my limitation was too significant to meet the expectations, therefore for Spain we counted as “submitted” the applications that I finished and were ready to be sent out as soon as Street Child España was registered.
In total, I was able to submit and/or finish 10 for the following institutions: Institut Esports Barcelona for 30k, MAPFRE foundation for 30k, LUSH Charity Pot Spain for 5k, Puerto Rico Banco Popular (PRBP) for 10k, Premio Natura for 60k, Worldcoo for 6k and HelpUP for 6k.
It is the task of the intern to do the research to find these trusts and foundations, but also to personalize the applications to each one of them. Some of them had a standard form of application and some others such as MAPFRE foundation required an extensive description of about 10 pages, nonetheless all of them required a personalized and detailed budget where my job was to calculate a reasonable amount they would fund. In order to do so, I would have to look at previous grants given by them, the amount pledged, and then I would have to do a probability test of what project they would like to fund the most. The probability test is nothing more than examining the path of funding they have done in the previous calls and examine the tendency of the nature of the projects funded, for
instance, if all of them have had a gender focus, my job would be to apply with the most gender based project Street Child did.
T&F was one of the least rewarding tasks in the short run, but one of the tasks I loved the most because of the amount of learning we did on the projects in the field.
Partnerships
Partnerships have been the aspect of most growth during my internship at Street Child. They represent long-standing cooperations of win-win situations. These relationships are extremely valuable for a young NGO that is seeking its space to be seen and recognized as trustworthy. Partnerships inspire stability and legitimize the NGO’s work among their network.
The following partnerships have been the most significant ones in terms of growth, and innovation:
Worldcoo, an international company that describes themselves as “bringing
together committed companies with NGOs to fund projects with a huge impact on society”, was one of the big partnerships I helped to build. This type of relationship was an easy get-in but a continuous and constant work to build and maintain the good reputation up. Worldcoo represents a solid bridge that unites NGOs with private companies that trust the company and want to help a good cause. This facilitates the NGO’s work in terms of research as it represents the common ground where the two sides meet and decide if they like each other. However, the beginning is the easy path as once you are in, you must work towards standing out from the other NGOs as competitiveness is high, and getting noticed is very important in order to get chosen first. During the time I worked with them, it reminded me of a dating site, where both sides know in general what they want, but need to look more appealing than the others at first to catch each other’s attention.
Source: http://www.worldcoo.com/en/
Kampoos is an international company that offers sport related activities such as football summer camps at an international level. They also own a “social impact” department, where they advertise sport related activities that support a good cause or are carried out by charities. This advertisement is completely for free for NGOs to reach the Kampoos’ great sportive network. This partnership was not fully initiated by me, however I took over the newly initiated relationship as soon as I started my internship. In terms of productivity, this partnership was somehow great to get our sport events more visibility among the Spanish audience, however
not huge palpable results were obtained through it. This partnership did not offer a great deal of challenges, however in terms of the audience that was targeted, it might have not been on the right track as the main theme for them is young people seeking to get better at a specific sport. On the one hand, youngsters under 18 years of old, do not have the economic capacity nor are the ultimate decision makers of their household to take on such a sport challenge. In this case, their parents are ultimately seeking to get their kids somewhere else to a safe environment to practice sports. On the positive side, I believe it does not harm Street Child’s reputation nor interests to be on their website.
Sources: https://www.kampoos.co.uk/west-africa-cycle-challenge/2918, https:// www.kampoos.co.uk/sierra-leone-marathon/2919
Barcelona Sport Management Department (BSMD), this partnership was built
upon a meeting I set up with the department right at the beginning of my internship. This new relationship led to great results such as the great visibility in the City Council to get public funding for Street Child, and the connection that was made with other run organizers in Barcelona.
La Sansi is a running/athletic club that helps to organize runs and running fairs in Spain. This partnership was fully initiated by me, through the meeting I set up in the Barcelona city council with the BSMD. The club’s director is Jose Luís Blanco, a former Spanish olympic runner who we met with back in November 2017, and he already showed great interest in the Street Child’s projects. The meeting was of great success due to the fact that he offered us to be in one of their running fairs in Barcelona at no cost. This event would allow us to reach more than 10,000 runners overall. The running fair took place in Barcelona and it lasted 3 days, from the 29th of December 2017 until the 31 of December of that year.
Source: http://www.lasansi.com/es
Zona VIP Events, is a Spanish company that focuses on the organization and management of sports events and advertisement management. They helped to organize the half-marathon in Gavà, a town close to Barcelona. This partnership, again, was built from scratch and was very productive as they allowed us to put one leaflet about our run in Sierra Leona in each runner’s bag which made a total reach of 2.000 runners. This action did not bring great measurable results in terms of people interested in Street Child after the run, however the Street Child brand was being seen by the right people and audience.
Source: http://www.zonavipevents.com
SevenMila is a Spanish company that focuses on sports marketing,
communication and the organization of events. I first approached them in January 2018, as I saw they were the organizers of one of the biggest runs is Barcelona, “la
cursa de bombers” or “the firefighters’ run”. Thanks to the relationship Street Child
had built with the BSMD, we got connected through them with the director of SevenMila, who I explained over the phone and in an email what Street Child does and why it does it. Back in January-February, the director confirmed our stand for free at the running fair the two days prior the run (20th and 21st of April) and he also confirmed that we were going to be able to put one of our leaflets in each runner’s bag, which meant we could ensure our reach to the 15,000 runners that participated in la Cursa de Bombers. This event represented a very special opportunity for the charity, as it combined the two previous running events Street Child participated in. This partnership was one of the most productive ones I built from scratch as after the run, Street Child already got contacted by various runners interested in our sport challenge in Sierra Leona.
Source: https://sevenmila.com
Coocciò is a professional kitchen for cooks to try their menus and their food before starting up their own business. The partnership started back in December, where I organized a fundraising event that consisted of a Christmas cookies decorating workshop with the help of a professional baker, Aure Artesanía Personalizada, that had previously baked cakes for all type of celebrities from the Barcelona Football Club. Coocciò also offered us to set up more cooking events in the future in their kitchen.
Cocovail Beer Hall is a pub in the centre of Barcelona where Street Child had previously set up events such a Christmas Pub Quiz. Due to the great relationship the charity already had with them, I proposed to become official partners where any event we set up in their pub, they would give us the 10% of the benefits as a donation and they would also advertise any other event we hosted in their venue. In exchange, they asked us to promote this new partnership in our social media and our webpage.
La Cereria is a vegan-Argentinian restaurant where I set up a field update event for Street Child in February, 2018. The restaurant already cooperated with other NGOs in the past and that’s why I approached them in the first place as Street Child needed a venue to host the field up date for donors. Likewise the previous partnership, I was able to get for Street Child the 10% commission, as donations, of the benefits we brought in that night.
Estiber is an agency specializing in trips and ski offers. This partnership was built
long before I was an intern in Street Child, however, every year Street Child organizes a ski trip with them and again, gets a commission per person we bring to the trip. The great difference we had with them this year, is that I set up a meeting with them to discuss the percentage of those commissions where Street
Child managed to get a higher percentage of them, bringing therefore more money as a donation. This renovated partnership will lead the following events the charity set ups with them.
Volunteers’ Coordinator
The volunteers’ coordinator is the first point of contact between the people interested in becoming a volunteer and the charity. My role as the volunteer’s coordinator involved interviewing the people to find out more of what they wanted, their skills and abilities, their availability and matching them with the right department. Once they were selected, I made sure to explain the practicalities of the job and depending on their availability and the area they would help us with, I would set up a meeting with the person responsible of that particular department. The volunteers’ coordinator was also responsible of managing the communications and the needs of the charity to them, i.e. if there was an event that needed extra hands for helping or we needed translations to be made, I would look through the database for the best candidates to communicate with. The above mentioned would be suitable for all kind of volunteers at first, however I was also responsible for a group of 6 volunteers that studied at the Toulouse Business School (TBS) in Barcelona, and had to complete a total of 50 hours of volunteering per person. These hours were mandatory in order to pass, and therefore they needed a constant guide for what to do to complete them. Managing these volunteers was an extra challenge as they were 18 year olds’ first year abroad and their sense of responsibility was not enough. Meetings were always cancelled at the very last minute, they would not respond to our messages or they would saying that they are constantly very busy. The challenge was not that much for the charity as we did not depend on them in any aspect, but for me as I was responsible somehow for their hours. This challenge came to an end when I had the opportunity to talk to 3 of them, as I had to state that the conditions of working with them was not professional at all, and they understood that the job of a volunteer is not to expect tasks for their skills but to be proactive and available for our events. At the end they apologized and promised to carry out an event in their home countries as a fundraising act for Street Child.
Carrying out this task was like a path of self-learning on HR, it was one of my least favorite tasks, but it had to be done and when things worked, the outcome was extremely rewarding.
Street Child Spain Social Media
As every intern from every country where Street Child operates in as a fundraising entity, we would be in charge of updating our social media on a regular basis. In this case, there would be a designated intern for the role of communications’ coordinator, that would design and write the standard posts for all the countries and then the interns would have to write one or two country-specific posts a week. For every country, there would have to be 3 standard posts to be translated in each language, and the country-specific posts would have to be relevant only for that intern’s country, for instance, some of the Spanish posts I designed were to show pictures from an event we would have done and to thank our sponsors and/or partners.
The social media platforms we were mainly using was Facebook and LinkedIn, where the posts would have to have a corporate focus for companies. Nevertheless, within this task, it would also include the monthly newsletter we would send to our subscribers, in the case for Spain, it would reach more than 600 people every month and for the task, and for this task we were trained on how to use Mailchimp.
Street Child Spain Webpage
Part of my internship was also to update the Street Child Spain webpage according to the demands of the European communications coordinator. Although it was a time consuming task, I learned how to use the platform Squarespace for the management of the website. As well as this platform, we were also trained on how to use the program Canva for editing images with text on them and pictures.
Sierra Leone Marathon (SLM) and West Africa Cycle Challenge (WACC)
Every year Street Child hosts 2 international sport challenges where runners and cyclists from all over the world are encouraged to participate in. Part of our role as interns in the charity, is to promote these challenges.
The SLM consists of a run where the participants can choose the distance they want to run. Prior the trip, Street Child asks the runners to fundraise 1.200€ and the days before the run the charity takes the runners to the communities where Street Child works to show them the in-country projects they are helping to fund with the previously raised money. In the case of WACC, the participants have to raise 1.500€ and they take a route of 300km in 5 days where they stop on the way from Sierra Leone to Liberia in the communities where Street Child works.
These sport challenges raised every year a great amount of donations, therefore their promotion is quite important for the entity. Part of our role at Street Child is that promotion, and in order to do so we are required to contact the media from our respective countries such as newspapers, blogs and others, to publish articles about these challenges. During my internship at Street Child I managed to get an article about SLM published in an online sports magazine and an article on WACC and SLM published in a newspaper and the online version of it.
On top of those articles and as explained in the partnerships section, I also got Street Child 2 stands at no cost at two important running fairs, allowing our brand to reach more than 25.000 runners, and we were able to put a leaflet about our sport challenges in the runners’ bags in two different runs, allowing our challenges to reach more than 16.000 runners.
This task was very productive for the NGO as they had never seen such a great advertisement of their brand in Spain, nevertheless for myself it involved a great deal of hours involved at the running fairs as I was the only local person and the point of contact with our partners. Nevertheless it also brought interesting challenges that came from being face to face to potential runners, where they questioned the whole idea behind volunteers having to fundraise money and why to do so. If it wasn’t for these challenges, this part of the internship was completely out of my knowledge on advertisement.
Source for the 1st published article: https://www.diariogol.com/mas-deporte/ sierra-leona-acoge-la-maraton-mas-educativa-del-mundo_531521_102.html Source for the 2nd published article: http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/ 20180316/441551816071/financiacion-ong-resultados-objetivos-proyecto.html
Local Events
One of my ongoing role was as the local events planner. This task was assigned to me as I am from Barcelona and therefore I know the culture well and speak the local language as a native speaker.
Some of the events I helped to set up among others are:
A Christmas Cookie Decorating Workshop, this was a fundraising event that brought 155€ as donations for Street Child Spain. This event was quite successful as 25 people showed up and we started two new partnerships with the kitchen Coocciò and the professional baker, Aure Artesanía Personalizada. A Christmas Pub Quiz that brought 650€ profit for the charity, this event is hosted by Street
Child every year, but this year I was responsible for it. A Ski Trip to Andorra, again this event has been hosted by Street child in the past however this year I was in charge of it with our partner Estiber and it brought 738€ in donations. Finally and among others, I organized the Field Update with the talk of Anne Beuken, our colleague that had been living in Sierra Leone was going to report on the projects on the field to our donors, corporate partners and potential runners of our run in Sierra Leone.
Trainings and Mentoring
During my 6 month internship, we were trained on a regular basis on several topics. For T&F some of the training was conducted right at the beginning of the internship by my former mentor but we also had online trainings through the Non
profit leadership lab on “How to Write a Fabulous Grant Proposal” by Lindsay
Hoffman.
We also had training sessions on time management, that was implemented by Freya Blesinger, a professional teacher on this topic. This training was quite important for our job in the charity as it taught us how to manage our time baring in mind the scale of the “important” and the “urgent” matters, for instance, T&F is usually never urgent and interns therefore tend to leave it on the side although it’s the task that requires more of our time and can bring more profit, on the other hand social media it is a task that it is more urgent to be updated on a daily basis, however it is not something that will bring much benefits if any. Managing your time correctly in order to be able to implement the 80/20 rule it is greatly important, i.e. being able to bring 80% of the profit through 20% of your time and effort.
In terms of how to interpret online data, we were trained on how Google Analytics works. This training was led by a professional IT data interpreter that taught us how important it is to invest time on Google Analytics which will make your business grow significantly because of its visibility.
Finally, we had some training sessions on social media growth, some of these were online masterclasses called “Building Your Audience on Facebook” by the
Non Profit Leadership Lab, and then we also had an expert on Facebook and
Instagram growth whom I invited to our office after assisting to one of his talks in Barcelona.
In terms of mentoring, each intern has an assigned mentor at the beginning of the internship to guide us on our mentoring week and our trainings and questions we have during the first month. During my internship I have been the mentor of 3 new
interns, where I needed to dedicate extra time for them from all the other tasks I already had to do.
Board Meetings
Overall during my internship we had two board meetings and one offsite workshop meeting with the members of the board of Street Child Spain. My role in these meetings was as a note taker and to report back on how the registration process of Street Child Spain was going and at what stage it was in.
Weekly Tasks
There were several weekly tasks to be conducted to report on the job the intern was focusing on during that week.
On Mondays we would have a meeting first thing in the morning with the whole team to report on 3 actions we achieved the previous week and 2 topics to focus on the current week. As each one of us had undergoing roles, for instance for myself would be events and volunteers, we also had to report on any challenges that were being faced so as to get help from the team, or simply to inform how things were going in these areas. As well as the group meeting, we would also have one on one sessions with our manager to report back on any particular issue we ran onto where his help was needed or his presence was required.
On Tuesdays we had to report online if we had any T&F questions, for instance, many times when we submit applications, the foundations would often reply with more questions about the project we sent, some of these questions we could answer but some others were quite specific to the field work and we would have to communicate with the London office to get an answer to send back as soon as possible.
On Wednesdays we had to report to the Barcelona and the London office on what we were currently working on for T&F and in case we found a potential foundation from another country, we would ask the intern from that country to investigate it further.
On Fridays we had to report on what tasks did we achieve that week to the London office.
Finally, at the end of the month we had to work on our end of the month report which consisted in checking the bank balance for our home countries, donations raised and any financial matter such as expenses for the month. Adding our new
contacts to our database reporting back to our manager the highlights for the month.
CHAPTER III: Evaluation of the Placement
Personal Development and Learnings.
Overall, my internship was extremely successful in terms of learnings and personal development. When it comes to the learnings I’ve done, I’ve realized that this internship has taught me many things from many topics. Even though it has been very tough for the long hours that I did some days, intense work that it had to be done to have good outcomes from every task assigned, and the challenges from the lack of personnel, money and resources, I am extremely satisfied with the time I’ve spent on this placement.
The environment in the office was very comfortable in terms of colleagues and atmosphere, as everyone there was available to help each other on any matter. Although the office was very old and sometimes the facilities did not work, I knew that the money was being well-spent on the projects and not on unneeded commodities. In terms of the hours, I was very happy with the approach as we were responsible for our own time, i.e. if one day we had to do longer hours because of an event or the amount of work, we could take those hours from another day without having to report the exact amount of hours back. This last point was one of the examples of the great trust that was put into the interns, and it made me very comfortable as there seemed to be no difference between the two paid member staff at the office and the rest of the team including interns and volunteers. In fact, each one of us could have a key of the office in case some of us wanted to come earlier to the office one day and leave earlier or the opposite. This amount of trust inspired me to work harder to get better results for the charity as I believed in it and I liked it so I knew all the effort was well deserved.
For the interns that come from abroad, in this case I did not have the experience of having to move to another country and face all the financial and accommodation challenges, nevertheless I know from seeing other interns at the office that Street Child provides a very well detailed guide on “How-to survive in Barcelona”.
Overall the learnings and personal development I did was on how does a fundraising entity NGO work and how to work in a very challenging environment when it comes to lack of resources and money. I am extremely happy with all the
experience I acquired during my placement and I am convinced this had opened new career opportunities that I did not have previously. I made great contacts within the Street Child network and I discovered new ways of looking at NGOs and applying to a job position. I believe my job at the organization has been of great value for both sides and my time at the entity has been a well-invested time in my life.
Conclusion and Future Career Orientation
In conclusion, I am very happy to have been able to contribute with great effort to a fantastic cause. For this reason, I am not leaving the Street Child network just yet as I was offered the great opportunity of becoming an international volunteer in Sierra Leone. This opportunity will help me to do research for my thesis on former child soldiers in the country and therefore I will be moving to Sierra Leone for 12 weeks on the 11th of May of 2018.
This internship has taught me that what I want to do next is acquire field experience in order to be able to work as a researcher in the field for potential projects that Street Child or another NGO might be happy to invest in.
I would recommend for any student to take on the challenge of this internship, because of the amount of learnings I have done throughout the 6 month placement, and because of the great amount of challenges you have to overcome, which at the end of it, I feel very satisfied with myself and the job I’ve done.
Overall, my degree and my placement were not fully interrelated in terms of the practicalities of the job, however I believe that it is needed to have this master’s degree to go into the career path I am about to take, therefore the opportunity I took to study this master’s degree on International Security at the University of Groningen was a well-taken decision.
