As an honours International Development Studies student going into my final year of undergraduate studies, I knew that there were a few criteria I absolutely wanted to get out of my final university internship, namely authentic hands-on experience and a chance to have professional experience to better understand my specialty areas within development and the direction I would like to take my career after graduation. My internship at In-Sight Collaborative has undoubtedly fulfilled all of my objectives.
In-Sight Collaborative is a non-profit organization that aims to improve the way humanitarian aid is delivered by promoting the return and maintenance of autonomy and dignity among forced displaced populations. In-Sight Collaborative does this by operating within the accompaniment model in which the humanitarian actor comes alongside the community and helps them meet needs that they identify rather than imposing their own ideas about the best course of action. This emphasizes the notion that people experiencing forced displacement are the experts of their own circumstance and must be involved in the assessment, planning, and implementation of humanitarian interventions. The three main 鈥渁rms鈥� of the organization are advocacy, education, and innovative action, and together, these three elements aim to use a holistic approach to humanitarian work.
My responsibilities as an intern can primarily be understood through my roles as a mentor and as an intern. As a mentor, I was responsible for leading a group of ten mentees throughout the six-week educational program that was held by the organization. Each week, a different theme relating to forcibly displaced migrants was introduced, and participants were responsible for creating communication tools to demonstrate their understanding and analysis of the themes. Additionally, I led a group project in which mentees collaborated in order to identify a problem and come up with a solution for an issue relating to forced migrants. As an intern, I primarily arranged, organized, and moderated all of the webinars. This was a huge responsibility because most of the content came down to the speakers鈥� presentations which related to the weekly theme. The speakers included professors, lawyers, researchers, and field experts. Each presentation helped our participants gain immense insight into the weekly theme. Moderating these webinars meant organizing a time for the live Zoom presentations, as well as organizing the bios and information to share with the participants prior to the webinar. During the presentations, I would moderate by introducing the speaker and following up their presentation with questions as well as communicating questions sent in by participants throughout the webinar. Additionally, it was very rewarding as a mentor to see my mentees start to take things into their own hands as the program progressed, as it became clear which members were actively engaging with the weekly content. It was also extremely invaluable to me that I was able to communicate directly with the affected populations. At many of our weekly meetings, connections at the organization who were or are forcibly displaced were willing to speak to us about their honest experiences, including challenges that they faced every day. It was extremely important for me to keep in mind that these are current realities that people are facing and that while we may find their experiences interesting, it is crucial to remember that every time someone shares their experiences, they are reliving much of the trauma and difficulty that they have faced.
I will be receiving academic credit for the internship, as I would like to further investigate the approaches taken by In-Sight Collaborative under this 鈥減aradigm shift鈥� or 鈥渃hange鈥� in humanitarian aid delivery under Professor Kazue Takamura. I will further research the 鈥渨hite saviour complex鈥� or 鈥渉eroism dynamic鈥� that has been built by the West in terms of approaches to aid and to look into more effective approaches that return the autonomy to the affected populations. I was fortunate enough to receive funding for this internship, which alleviated immense stress I had in terms of living expenses and allowed me to really focus on my work. Although the internship, being remote, posed its own challenges in terms of really connecting with people, I was able to overcome many of these challenges by arranging as many video calls as possible in order to match names to faces and build professional relationships. With my utmost gratitude, I would like to thank Ms. Martine Vanasse and Mr. Randy Wilbert for their generosity in providing the funding for my internship this summer.
