6/23/2023 0 Comments Mid-Way internship UpdateThe week after my shadowing, I began working directly under my supervisor, and discussed the plan for the work that I will be doing for the next 8 weeks. I would be starting working on collecting data on the activities and beneficiaries from each of the departments from the period between December 2022 and April 2023 to format into an overall excel sheet. Then I would move onto conducting research on asylum procedures and formulating a one-page report for the stakeholders to understand the situation in Morocco. At the end of June and throughout July, I will be tasked with working on updating documents for the RefAid website on new organizations that are in the different cities in Morocco. This will require reviewing a variety of documents, compiling information, and translating between French and English for the information to be submitted to the app workers at the end of July. Additional work would be given throughout based on needs from the organization. After completing the compilation of data from each of the departments and putting them together, I attended a meeting with my supervisor with the head supervisor for DDM to discuss the planning of funding for projects for the following fiscal year.
This ultimately led to a large conference the following week, where DDM rented out a hotel conference room with members from each of the offices in DDM having traveled in. During the two-day conference they discussed how much funding they had received for the following fiscal year and how it the money would be allocated to each regional office. Then each office had a representative that presented their monitoring frameworks for each department of services. This conference was an impactful experience for me to witness the exact planning that goes into the allocation of funding for a humanitarian organization and their plans to monitor the success of the activities funded. I was able to greatly understand the frameworks of the models they were using when discussing the activities as they were in a format similar to the results monitoring frameworks that we studied in our Monitoring and Evaluation course from the spring. I am grateful that they allowed me to attend these sessions and gained valuable experience learning about the coordination and evaluation process for major projects for a humanitarian organization. Challenges The language barrier has been the greatest challenge for this internship. The organization operates fully in French, with about 4 out of the 10 office employees speaking English. While I do speak French, the first week was difficult getting thrown into the operations of the organization as the workers and beneficiaries spoken rapidly in French. While I minored in French in college, I am not at a native French speaking level as the others in the organization are. The first week I was often confused and had to ask for them to repeat what they said or say it slower so that I could understand. Luckily, my French skills are strong in discussing work/human rights topics as I had two courses focused on these topics. I am weaker, ironically, in the day-to-day speaking. This has been a benefit in that I have understood more of what is expected of me and what work I have been working on, while I am not always socially conversational. Over the weeks, I have settled in more to the language and I can tell that my skills have already improved conversationally over the past month. The two-day conference was a large test to my skills, as it was held in French with each speaker discussing their funding opportunities at a rapid pace. While it was challenging at times to keep up, I made sure to try to not get overwhelmed and just listen as well as I could to absorb what they were discussing. I kept open a tab for Word Reference on my computer so that when there was a word I didn’t understand, I could quickly look it up and continue to follow the speakers. I have enjoyed this challenge of raising my language abilities, and while it is difficult at times, I have worked hard to ensure that it does not hold me back.
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