INTERNSHIP REPORT
NURA JAAFAR
Internship organization Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department for Stabilization and Humanitarian Aid (DSH)
Humanitarian Aid Division (DSH-HH) Bezuidenhoutseweg 67, The Hague Period: 18/07/2016-18/01/2017 Supervisor: Jorg Zinken
NOHA Master in International Humanitarian Action
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (home) and Uppsala Universitet (host)
Internship supervisor: Elena Herman- Pletiougina
Studentnumber: S2298627
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Preface
The present report is the outcome of the fourth component of the Joint Master’s Degree in
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Table of content
Preface ... 1
Table of content ... 2
Introduction ... 3
The Internship Organisation ... 5
Tasks & Activities of the Internship ... 6
General intern tasks at Humanitarian Aid Division ... 6
Syria and Iraq dossier specific tasks ... 7
Voluntary extra tasks ... 7
Supervision of the Internship ... 9
Account of supervision ... 9
Problems or issues ... 9
Supervision moments ... 9
Living conditions ... 10
Overall living conditions ... 10
Housing ... 10
Costs of living ... 10
Social environment ... 10
Tips and Advice ... 11
Conclusion ... 12
Learning effects of internship ... 12
Skills ... 12
Self-development ... 12
Expectations and difficulties ... 12
Expectations ... 12
Difficulties ... 13
SWOT analysis ... 14
Internship as part of NOHA master ... 15
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Introduction
Getting an internship was easier said than done. I started already early March 2016 with searching for online vacancies, however, soon found out that I was too early for the period I was looking for. Many organizations told me that their vacancies for internships would go online in early summer and that I had to wait for that.
My first applications remained unanswered, something that felt so frustrating. There goes much effort and time into writing a motivation letter for each specific vacancies and at one point I felt like giving up. I was somehow convinced that I would not succeed in finding one and therefore gave myself a short break (two weeks). Afterwards I was less critical about the sort of internship and applied for almost anything I could find, not consistent at all with what I was looking for. However, I thought; better something than nothing.
In my last few weeks of the semester in Sweden, I suddenly got positive replies. I am not sure what had changed compared to earlier that year, perhaps my motivation letters did get better? And suddenly I was invited for about eight interviews. Three of them went through skype, which felt a little distant but also more comfortable. One of them was an internship opportunity at the MoFA at the department for Human Right and Multilateral Organisations. However, I felt highly
uncomfortable with the way of communication, so when I got the acceptance phone-call I declined the offer. I found this very hard to do because everyone was convinced that it was a great
opportunity (which I am sure it was).
When I got back to the Netherlands I had made the decision to accept an offer from an organisation in Jordan. The day I was drafting the e-mail with all sorts of formal letters, I received an e-mail from MoFA with an invite for an interview. Since it is only possible to do an internship at MoFA when you are enrolled for a degree, I decided to at least take the change. This was exactly the department that would have my preference, namely the Humanitarian Aid Department. And therefore I replied to the organisation in Jordan that I wanted to do this interview and they were totally fine with it.
The interview itself went really well. I did not apply for a specific region or dossier, however they asked me whether I was willing to join the Syria and Iraq team. With my background and interest in the Middle East this was a ‘match made in heaven’. Normally you have to wait about a week before you hear back whether you got accepted, I heard it at the end of my interview and was totally overwhelmed. I think what helped me get the position was my knowledge about humanitarian action, the fact that I read some government documents before the interview and was informed about current (humanitarian) dilemma’s in Syria. Therefore I could basically answer all the questions. I decided to go for this internship because it is a great opportunity to see the policy making side and the donor perspective of the humanitarian field.
They wanted me to start as soon as possible, however, because the registration procedures are quite secure (and slow) at MoFA, it took four weeks. Therefore I started on the 18th of July. My contract was for six months and 36 hours per week. My expectations for the six months ahead where the following;
4 - Linked to that, I expected to be really looked at as ‘the intern’. Including the tasks that I
would get assigned. Therefore I tried not to get my hopes up too high.
- I expected the organisational structure to be extremely hierarchical with lots of people who felt really attached to their job title and position. I was not sure whether that would make me comfortable.
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The Internship Organisation
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a governmental institution located in The Hague, the Netherlands. It is the channel through which the Dutch Government communicates with foreign governments and international organisations. The MoFA is concerned with good international relations, not only through trade but also through political engagement and development interests, because they are of vital importance. MoFA promotes these relations from the department in The Hague, and through a network of over 150 offices (embassies, permanent representations and consulates) around the world. They are the eyes and ears of the Netherlands abroad.
According to MoFA, the Netherlands is “helping to build a safe, stable and prosperous world”. The Netherlands is committed to fight poverty, injustice and conflict and makes sure the interest of Dutch nationals abroad are safeguarded.
The organisation falls under the Minister of Foreign Affairs (currently Bert Koenders) and the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation (currently Lilianne Ploumen). The MoFA has many departments, which can broadly be divided into two sorts; the political affairs departments (such as the Department for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs) and thematic departments (such as the Department for Stabilization and Humanitarian Aid).
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Tasks & Activities of the Internship
The tasks and activities carried out during my internship at MoFA can be roughly divided into three; general tasks for interns interning at the Humanitarian Aid Division, tasks and activities that are specific to the Syria region and Iraq dossier that I supported, and tasks that I took (voluntarily) up. Thereby my internship involved many diverse tasks and activities.
General intern tasks at Humanitarian Aid Division
- Writing a Memorandum (Memo)
o There are two formats; one that requires a decision and one that is for information. Usually they go to the minister and are about a specific topic. In the Memo you write what the subject is, what is required from the minister, the core of information and/or summary, and additional necessary info that is more in depth. All of this is provided in bullets and has to be checked first by the head of the division, than head of the department, and then few other steps (including Director General) before it ends up with the minister.
- Writing a Beoordelingsmemorandum (Bemo)
o This sounds in name quite similar to a memo, but it is definitely not. A bemo is written when there is a new project proposal handed in by an organisation. The bemo is a document which needs to be filled in according to different criteria; such as, does the proposal fit the objectives of the ministry, does it make sense, is the logframe logical, does it target the right group etc.
- Writing a Beoordelingsrapportage
o After a project is finished, the organisation has to hand in a report about the project. This report has to clarify about the results, such as; Did they reach the people they wanted to reach? Did they perform all activities? If not, what where the circumstances and reasons why they could not? When I am positive about the performance, the organisation gets the 5% remaining money for their activity.
- Facebookpost
o Each Friday the Humanitarian Aid Division was responsible for providing a
facebookpost. This is easier said than done, it often took a lot of time. We wanted to make the facebook page for our department easy relatable and accessible for our followers (from any background, profession etc) and the posts could not have any political sensible in it. It was more about informing the public. Together with the other interns at Humanitarian aid Division we made sure there was a post and we had to check it with the policy officer working on that topic whether it was ok.
- Writing minutes
o Every Tuesday we had our weekly meeting with everyone working at the Humanitarian Aid Division. It was the task of the interns to make sure to write the minutes and to keep the agenda up to date. We would e-mail the minutes at the end of the day to the whole department and to the permanent representations.
- DSH Newsletter
o Every Thursday the interns had to provide quotes and other bullets for the newsletter of the department. This had to be a mix of funny and serious topics that were relevant for the week.
7 o This is writing a formal letter/reaction back to someone who, through official channels,
has asked a questions to the MoFA. This could be any questions (such as, why don’t we send back all immigrants to Africa, to questions such as; is it possible to elaborate what you do to end the conflict in Syria?). No matter the question, we have to write a formal letter back answering the question. Usually the interns are asked to write a concept letter.
Syria and Iraq dossier specific tasks
- News bulletin
o Every day both ministers receive an e-mail with political, security and humanitarian developments in both Syria and Iraq. It was my duty to make sure the humanitarian developments were included in this daily e-mail. So every day I would go through different news websites, twitter accounts of organizations and humanitarian site with infographics and so on to collect data and information. This I would mould into bullets, which were first checked by my supervisor before send to the ministers.
- Writing an SMO instruction
o Every week MoFA and the Ministry of Defence get together to talk/discuss about the fight against ISIS. For this meeting (called SMO) I had to provide each Tuesday an instruction with a recap of all humanitarian developments in Iraq and Syria. - Updating Factsheets
o We have a factsheet on Syria and the region, and one for Iraq. The factsheets contain information about developments and about the financial situation. So what are the current appeals, how much are they covered and what has the Netherlands contributed per year and per country. It was my task to make sure these factsheet were up to date. Factsheets are used for many purposes, including for the dossiers of the Ministers. - Dossier contribution
o For every meeting and or travel of the ministers or his/her envoys a dossier had to be prepared with information about every single meeting. Including speaking points, background information and CV’s of the people they meet. I have often contributed with collecting the required information and processing it into the right documents. - NGO Platform on Syria
o Once every two months we organize an NGO platform on Syria with our partner organization in order to get more insight-information on the work of the organisation and the situation on the ground. I was actively involved in the administrative work of this platform, such as sending the invitation and agenda, making reservations for the room and catering, make sure a central topic is being chosen and picking up the representatives of the organizations, taking minutes and providing these to all people involved afterwards.
- Organising meetings with organisations or other people interested to have a meeting at MoFA with regards to Syria, Iraq and Humanitarian Aid.
Voluntary extra tasks
- I facilitated the speeddates. The speeddates are initiated to make sure that everyone
8 done during the ‘date’, was up to the couples themselves, I did not have to decide that for them.
- Organising in-depth sessions about specific topics relevant for the Humanitarian Aid Division. o Together with a policy officer I organised monthly sessions in which we would invite a
speaker from outside MoFA to talk about a certain topic of which we thought it would be useful to gain more skills/knowledge. Therefore we have organised sessions about religion in Humanitarian Action, International Humanitarian Law, Big Data, UN Pooled Funds etc. This required a lot of contact with possible speakers, meeting with them to discuss the content of the session and invite attendees.
- Making sure there were short in-depth sessions during the weekly meeting of the department.
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Supervision of the Internship
Account of supervision
Eva de Ridder was for the Humanitarian Aid Division responsible for publishing the vacancies, reading through the provided material and making the first selection of interns. She was also the person who in the beginning made sure I was registered with MoFA and got all the documents in time. My formal supervisor during the internship was Jorg Zinken. He works on the Syria dossier and was also present during the internship interview. In the beginning he was assigning me tasks and helping me out with everything. However, the Syria and Iraq team was together with another policy officer, Judith van Niekerk. We basically divided the work between the three of us and therefore she did the same things as Jorg.
Problems or issues
Already in the second month Jorg was going on an internship for MoFA in Mozambique and South Africa for five weeks. Therefore Judith took over the entire dossier and the supervision over me for these weeks. However, a lot was happening in Syria and Iraq and so she was extremely busy and therefore did not have enough time/took the time to assign me tasks. So after two weeks I asked to drink coffee with her and explained that I felt like I would be capable to lighten her workload and that I would appreciate to be more involved in order to be up to date on the latest developments in the field. She welcomed this meeting and since then she took me took all meetings and I got much more responsibility. When Jorg got back from his internship, they worked together with me and there was no distinction anymore who was my supervisor, because they both felt like they were.
Supervision moments
There were not really fixed moments where I sat down with my supervisor to discuss my
performance. Towards the end of my third month I asked for an evaluation moment. Not because I thought I was not performing right, but because I wanted to know whether there were things I could still improve during my time at MoFA. Jorg welcomed the idea and we informally sat down with a coffee to discuss all the good stuff, and things that could improve. On my last day of the internship we held an exitmeeting, this time with both Judith and Jorg so they could both let me know how they experienced it. They were overwhelmingly positive and asked me whether there were some things that they could improve for the next intern. The main points I made where;
- You were an incredible team, so continue doing the supervision together.
- Plan fixed moments for feedback. It is uncomfortable for an intern to plan these themselves and it is positive for both parties to know where you stand.
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Living conditions
Overall living conditions
In general I can say that my living conditions where normal. I did not go to another country or place, so it was easily adapting. I am glad I lived nearby MoFA which saved me time to spend for other things. I definitely cannot complain.
Housing
It did not take too long before I found a place to stay, though I did get a bit nervous because of the short time span. I had posted something on my facebook about me looking for a room in The Hague or Delft. Someone reacted saying that she was going abroad for an internship in the same period that I was looking for a room for. She therefore suggested that I could stay in her studio until she got back. The studio was located at walking distance from MoFA (7 minutes) and from central station (5min), so I definitely had some luck. I did not share the room with someone else. I had my own small kitchen and bathroom. I just shared the hallway and washing machine and dryer with other people in the building.
Costs of living
The costs of living where the same as I was used to in the Netherlands. However, my room was pretty expensive (or at least more than I was used to). Luckily, if you do an internship at MoFA you either get your travelcosts covered, or you get pension allowance. Because of the pension allowance it was not expensive at all to stay in my room. In addition to the pension allowance, you receive a monthly remuneration for your works as an intern. This is not enough to live from, but more than with many other internship. Besides this, I borrowed money from DUO to cover all costs.
Social environment
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Tips and Advice
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Conclusion
Learning effects of internship
Skills
I have learned that I am quite good at ad-hoc tasks, which we had a lot for the Syria region, but also that I am less good with non-urgent in-depth tasks. Even though I sometimes felt a bit stress with the ad-hoc tasks, I am better able to manage them time-wise and I perform better on them. With some tasks that weren't urgent I had much more difficulty to sit down and make time to do them (sch as with updating factsheets). Then I would often just 'wait' for a task to come in between. This is especially the case if I have to work on something that someone else has previously worked on, I rather prefer to start something from scratch with a little guidance in order to make it my own. I am a proactive person who is easily enthusiastic about something. I think that showed the other employees that I was motivated and had much positive energy. However, sometimes I was a little proactive and doing too many small tasks between the regular work, and therefore I sometimes had to stress a little bit to get work done.
I learned how to be a quick worker. Usually with university work I start my work in advance, and therefore spend a lot of time on it. Now the deadlines were much tighter which required me to sit down and ‘produce’. I did not think beforehand that I would be good at it but I think I did well. This also learned me how to prioritize tasks. When I started the internship everything would be on the same level of priority in my head, but that I was not able to manage. So pretty soon I knew what was expected from me first and how long that would take me.
Self-development
I have learned that I need people around me to give me (positive) energy. When I see people around me working really hard, or discussing certain topics, it definitely gives me energy to get me going through the day. On days that many people were working at home, there were less conversations and the days just felt so much longer. It also made it difficult for me to motivate myself to work hard. I am an organizational person in nature. I like to have control over things, especially when I organise them myself. However, with the in-depth session for the division which I organised with a policy officer, I got to learn that I can find it hard to work with someone else who is also a bit of a controlfreak. It actually taught me to cope with that, and to let responsibilities and decisions go. I cannot control everything.
During the internship I have also learned to take myself serious. I have the tendency to think that I am not good enough or that the people I was meeting would not take an intern serious. But they proved me wrong and my supervisor told me that I knew what I was talking about and that I should not be scared to ask questions.
Expectations and difficulties
Expectations
- I wanted to get an insight into the policy making side with regards to the humanitarian field. But expected to not have full access to all sort of (insight) information.
I did get first-hand information at all times. Also because I shared an e-mail account with the Syria and Iraq team, where most information was send to. It did not matter how confidential the
13 the best way to give humanitarian aid in this situation?”. The ministers were really on top of the situation in Syria and Iraq and have asked several times to come with policy recommendations. I did not have much input on these kind of decisions, but I was involved in the process, discussions and was kept up to date, ánd could say what I thought. This really made the internship worthy.
- Linked to that, I expected to be really looked at as ‘the intern’. Including the tasks that I would get assigned. Therefore I tried not to get my hopes up too high.
The department gives the interns a lot of responsibility and therefore makes you feel like part of the team. The work does not only consist of typical ‘intern-tasks’ such as writing minutes and making facebook posts. Instead I had many tasks that were my own. It was for example my responsibility to write a humanitarian bulletin for the ministers every day on the developments in the humanitarian field in Syria and Iraq. Besides I was in the lead to organise the NGO Platform on Syria and stay in contact with all the participating organisations. I really enjoyed doing these kind of tasks. In addition I worked on anything my team needs me with, such as contributing to dossiers for the ministers. I felt appreciated, trusted and capable of being part of a team. Even the secretariat of the department used to say “sometimes we feel like the MoFA is running on interns”.
- I expected the organisational structure to be extremely hierarchical with lots of people who felt really attached to their job title and position. I was not sure whether that would make me comfortable.
This was very much less the case then I expected. From the outside, MoFA feels like a fortress with only men in suits inside. But that definitely was not true, even though you still had some people who acted like they were feeling better than others, most of them did not. There are many women working at MoFA and almost all the employees were so welcoming and nice. I immediately felt home when I had my first workday. The job title/position judgement was not valid, I did not experience many people feeling better than others. However, the position did give some people other responsibility, and because everything for the ministers first has to be checked by many different people in the higher ranks, there is where it becomes visible.
However, because MoFA is considered by many as a prestigious workplace, I sometimes felt as if I was interning with only the best students. Even though my department felt less ‘prestigious’ compared to other departments, the feeling that you have to perform well was strong. I sometimes found it difficult to acknowledge that I was not able to do something or that I was not good at a certain task because I sometimes felt that I needed/wanted to be performing outstanding.
- I did not have much idea about what to expect work wise. Like, what kind of work was being done at a MoFA (apart from the fact that I expected it to be a lot of paperwork).
Well, it is really is a 9-6 office job, for many people the days were even longer. And the paperwork expectation totally was true. In the end it is a lot of computer work, reading and writing documents, sending it to many people beforehand who all add a little touch before it ends up at the final person. Apart from the meetings, which I luckily had often, days could be quite dull. However, because of the high workload and tight deadlines, there was not much sitting around. It always looked like every employee was busy all the time and had like a thousand things to do. I did get an idea about what the work at MoFA looks like.
Difficulties
14 At work I was not getting emotional with sad news anymore (of which I had to make an update each day), that is something that is useful because it is not a field to work in if you get emotional with every child that dies. However, I do feel like I could use some field experience after this internship, just to be able to compare and see what fits me most. I choose this master and field because I care so much about people, but then I also need to work with them. At the same time, I do realise that the work at the ministry is of utmost importance, without them there is (almost) no humanitarian sector.
Connected to this is the fact that a lot of the topics I was working on were extremely politicised. Of course this is not strange since I am interning at a political institutions. The internship gives a lot of insight into the work and the political agenda’s behind, however I sometimes felt that we were not achieving as much humanitarian wise because MoFA is so connected to politics. I found it difficult to have the political agenda in my head while doing the work, and therefore I sometimes forgot to incorporate what the ‘Netherlands’ or minister Ploumen wants/has as political view.
The internship however, gives a good overview on the donor perspective of the humanitarian sector and I learned a lot about the difficulties and importance of Monitoring and Evaluation for the donor as well.
SWOT analysis
Strengths Weaknesses/Limitations
Internship
• Fully accepted, great responsibilities • Paid internship
• Learning about donor side and perspective • Many different tasks and opportunities • Learn multitasking
• Meeting many ‘important people’ from big and small humanitarian organisations
Internship
• Sometimes workload was too high because they may forget it is new for you and therefore might take longer
• Donor perspective and many have no background in humanitarian work.
• Not focussing on a specific tasks, therefore not getting super good at a specific
thing/topic. Organisation
• Big organisation where you work with lot of different departments and people.
• You have to do a six month internship, and I very much enjoyed that. It is good that internship was not shorter.
• Insight into Dutch policy on foreign affairs and how to express that at MoFA.
Organisation
• Employees alternate a lot, therefore difficult to get to know people well and to know who to contact.
• People working at MoFA don’t really introduce themselves properly. • Technical and administrative hurdles • Politicized and therefore not always
humanitarian.
Opportunities Threats
Internship
• Many opportunities to do extra tasks or to say whether you would like to take care about/organise certain things
• Opportunity to get asked to work for MoFA in future when they need someone on a specific project because you are in their data base.
Internship
• Doing too many small things.
• Because I was so tired at the end of the day, I did not join many social activities.
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• Building an extensive network • Opening doors for future jobs
Organisation
• Easily feeling lost in the amount of people you have to work with. Who was doing what again?
Internship as part of NOHA master
This internship is not a field experience with the humanitarian field from up close. It is quite a distant position to work from, very much politicized and a lot of paperwork. I did value the multidisciplinary background, especially with regards to evaluating project proposal and projects. Because of the master, I knew what we were talking about and already knew how the United Nations was
structured. I think this saved a lot of time and made me capable of involving in discussions. I could see with other interns who had no background in humanitarian action, that this was much more difficult for them.
It was great to see the donor perspective in the humanitarian field, and I felt that this was not really a topic/side that had been discussed at all in the master. The master is more focussed on the issues, stakes and position of organisations that want to provide humanitarian aid. I was really glad that we had done the management project during the master, because writing a proposal and logframe also came by during the internship. Not to write or develop it myself, but instead to check it. With interning at de donorside, I think that has given me valuable knowledge when working at an organisation because I am now more aware on why proposals look the way they do, what they are checked upon and why it sometimes will take a lot of time before you get an answer back from MoFA.
Positioning on the job market
The internship created many opportunities and I met many interesting people and organizations. Hopefully this opens future doors for me, but even now I can feel the benefits of it. I learned how organizations operate and how they work with the ministry, definitely useful to know. In addition, the people working at the humanitarian aid department always feel very welcoming, and I am sure I can ask them anything, also now the internship has ended.
While doing the internship, I more and more thought about the idea that I see myself working at MoFA. However, I also told myself and others that I thought I needed first other experience in order to be better at a job at MoFA. If I now get to know how our partner organizations work, what there difficulties are, how they see the relationship with MoFA, I think this would be very valuable experience and knowledge to incorporate in the work for MoFA. Especially because I think you otherwise have hardly any idea what you are talking about humanitarian wise.
