My name is Beatrice and I am currently in my last year at 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 Economics and Honors Political Science programs. As I was looking for internships this summer, my goal was to find something intersecting education, my long-time passion, and topics that are normally not taught in school because of financial or time constraints. At the time, I was thinking about leadership skills and civic engagement as topics that have great returns for society in terms of building and supporting community if taught to single individuals, and was looking for ways to contribute to this kind of empowerment. Lastly, Although I had already volunteered for several community organizations, I wanted to immerse myself in the 鈥渨orking side鈥� of Non-Governmental Organizations, and see if that is really a field I could see myself working in for my career.
The perfect opportunity has come with Social Justice Connection, an independent organization focusing on education and advocacy about human rights, economic development and eco-citizenship at a local and global level. I was immediately taken by their idea of eco-citizenship, adding a sphere of societal empowerment that I had not previously been focusing on. Within SJC, I specifically interned for Educonnexion, an educational program seeking to bring citizenship workshops to schools, NGOs and community groups in order to increase engagement and social change on the major social and environmental issues afflicting the 21st century. There, my daily responsibilities consisted in carrying out research for a wide array of workshops, ranging from the circular economy to the concept of cognitive dissonance applied to environmental activism. While I was expecting to only create a documentary base for the workshops, about two weeks before the end of our internship our supervisor encouraged us to take the research to the next level, creating exercises and developing pedagogic tools that would then be featured in the future cycle of workshops.
The highlights of my experience surely have to do with the practical application of the concepts learnt throughout the months, such as the development of narrative threads, the creation of activities, and the writing of scripts for Educonnexion鈥檚 lecturers. Among these tasks, the Capsules Grand Public have probably been the most eye-opening project I had the chance to work on. The aim of this project is to help raise public awareness of what the COVID-19 crisis says about the dominant political and economic system, to point out the inequalities and challenges that the pandemic makes more visible and glaring, while highlighting how the pandemic can also lead to positive changes and build social resilience in the long-term. Investigating the pandemic under the singular light of my field of studies, Economics, was an occasion for me to think about the deeper causes of the pandemic, and to realize how some institutional and societal responses to this emergency were informed by systemic, time-layered practices and decisions, and therefore carrying their own advantages and biases. Because of its virtual setting, the internship at SJC also offered an opportunity to learn the best ways to adapt and strive in a remote working environment. Being in a different time zone, I found it useful to set some personal boundaries and to communicate them to my team, who respected them all throughout the internship. Asking my teammates their respective work preferences created a common understanding of the expectations on our duties and deadlines, and also built empathy among us.
As the time of my graduation from 捆绑SM社区 approached, SJC鈥檚 strive for creating a more engaged society definitely provided me with better knowledge on the NGO world, their difficulties and their political importance. It also greatly helped give a new purpose to any academic project I will embark on, starting from my post-graduation plans which will be perhaps studying education policy at a graduate level. Although this was in my mind for some time, the activities offered by Social Justice Connection have been of great help in letting me understand if this was the right choice for me from an academic and professional point of view.
I would like to express all my gratitude to donors who supported the Arts Internship Awards for making the ASEF Award possible once more this year. In times of COVID, the ASEF Award helped me secure financial stability during the summer months, allowing me to fully delve into my internship. As my time at SJC is up, it will remain a cherished memory and a treasured experience, all thanks to your generosity.
