Each part of Sri Lanka has something special about it!

"The internship was thoroughly enjoyable and it was a pleasure to meet so many wonderful and intelligent people who are committed to making a positive change in Sri Lanka. I will forever value this wonderful experience." 

- Nia Brathweit (Barbados) 

Exchange Participant - Project La Femme 4.0

My name is Nia Brathwaite, I am 19 years old and I am from Barbados and a law student at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. I completed a 6 week GCDP internship with the Women’s Education and Research Centre from 12^th August 2014 to 23^rd September 2014 along with another intern, Jana Freund. The internship was set up by AIESEC in Colombo North. After meeting with the director, Dr Selvy Thiruchandran, it was clear that we would get out of the internship what we put in because Dr Selvy gave us great latitude to do whatever interested us.

Before I came to Sri Lanka, I did some background research on women’s rights and issues affecting women in Sri Lanka. However, I did some additional research when I arrived using WERC progress reports and other materials from the WERC library and realised that women’s rights work in Sri Lanka was more complex that it seemed from the outside. One thing that stood out to me was the shortage of funding. I first noticed that when I arrived and it became more and more evident as my internship progressed. The first thing I did was set up an ammado webpage for WERC. Ammado is a global donations online platform that connects nonprofits, companies and individuals dedicated to positive change. Individuals and companies can donate directly to nonprofits and it allows nonprofits to raise their own money for their own projects.

The second thing I did was to start writing articles. The topics for the articles were based on issues which stood out to me during my initial research while in Sri Lanka. I wrote the following articles:  ‘A Critical Analysis of Gender Relations in Barbados’, ‘Rape- a Growing Problem for Women in Sri Lanka’ and ‘Critiquing Gender Neutrality’. The gender neutrality article was prepared for the monthly lunch-time dialogue. Every month, a member of staff researches a topic relating to women’s issues. They present it and then have a discussion with other members of staff. I also wrote an article on an Afghan atheist who got asylum in the UK on religious grounds. This was written at the request of Dr Selvy after I mentioned it in a presentation I made about myself when I started the internship. I spoke about it because of my background in immigration and asylum work which lead me to my interest in human rights which lead me to women’s rights work and WERC.

Jana and I wrote several project proposals. I wrote project proposals on: a sensitization programme for men and one on tackling rape. Jana assisted me with these project proposals and I also assisted her with preparing a budget for a project proposal she was going to submit to the German Embassy for funding. Apart from writing articles and project proposals, Jana and I went to a conference, along with Geetha Thedchanamoorthy, hosted at the United Nations compound in Colombo which was about the re-establishment of the Forum against Gender-based Violence. I was very grateful for the opportunity to go to such a conference and meet persons involved in women’s rights in Sri Lanka.

I also learned quite a lot about some of the issues facing persons and organizations working in women’s rights in Sri Lanka as well as how hard it is to effectively tackle sensitive issues such as gender-based violence. Jana and I also attended an extremely informative three-day workshop ‘Doing Gender’: Critical Reflections on working on gender in post-war Sri Lanka. It was organised by the Centre for Poverty Analysis and facilitated by Dr Asha Abeyasekera and Dr Shermal Wijewardene. We met some of the leading women’s rights academics and activists in Sri Lanka and were able to benefit from their wealth of knowledge and experience. The workshop covered both theoretical and practical issues.

We discussed why here was a need for a reflective space for practitioners in NGOs, INGOs, the UN, research organisations, and state institutions. We also discussed ‘doing gender’ in the development sector, in human rights work, and related fields in post-war Sri Lanka. We talked about understanding how social change and doing gender are related and also participants articulated difficulties arising in practice. One of the difficulties was me was what many described as donor-driven projects where donors tried to dictate to local NGOs what issues to tackle and how to tackle them without considering the fact that these local NGOs are better equipped at identifying what issues to tackle ad how best to tackle them.

We also visited WIN (Women in Need) and met with Nilupul Kulatunga who is a Programme Coordinator there. She told us about WIN’s work, how they got started, what issues they deal with and some of the difficulties the face. The most time consuming part of the internship was organising the two projects that Jana and I came up with. The project I conceptualized was a workshop targeting young women. It was entitled “Empowering Young Women: How young women can take control on their job prospects”. It was an interactive workshop with 42 participants, all of whom intend to seek employment in the future. The workshop was intended to address the low work force participation of university graduates, specifically female graduates. There were a number of sessions each session had a different purpose. The organisation required a lot of preparatory work and it was only possible because of the help we received from WERC staff as well as Deshani Weerasinghe, our EP buddy who supported us throughout the internship.

The second project was fundraising for two needy families that WERC put us in contact with. Jana conceptualised this project. She got her family and friends to donate money to the two families instead of giving her birthday gifts. We met with them at their homes and interviewed them to decide the extent to which we could help them out. We also participated in

AIESEC activities during the internship. We met with the Minister of Defence along with Oshadi Daswatta, Local Committee President, Colombo North and Sohan Madhushanka Local Committee Vice President to help secure a location for a photo exhibition AIESEC in Colombo North wanted to host at the Arcade. The meeting was successful and we also attended the exhibition which was fun as we also got to participate in roll calls. I would also like to mention the outstanding support we received from AIESEC Colombo North, especially from our buddy Deshani Weerasinghe who arranged our visa, airport pick up and drop off, accommodation as well as some trips to a park and Ape Gamma. She showed us around Colombo and was available to call at any time of day or night (we know because we did call her at all hours). Deshani and I even arranged a birthday party for Jana. Deshani bought the cake and drinks and invited some other AIESECers.

The internship was thoroughly enjoyable and it was a pleasure to meet so many wonderful and intelligent people who are committed to making a positive change in Sri Lanka. I will forever value this wonderful experience. I was able to fully immerse myself in Sri Lankan culture through staying with a host family and travelling around Sri Lanka on the weekend. I travelled all over Colombo and I visited Galle, Trincomalee, Unawatuna, Wilpattu National Park, Hikkaduwa, Nilaveli, Sigiriya, Dambulla and Polonnaruwa. Each part of Sri Lanka has something special about it and I really enjoyed travelling around Sri Lanka.

An important thing I learned was that it is not necessary to speak the same language as someone to develop a friendship with them. The person at WERC that I had the closest relationship with was an office assistant who didn’t speak English. I also became more self-confident and more comfortable with interacting persons from any level of society. I also developed my time management, organisation and presentation skills. The internship also helped me to decide what career path I wanted to follow and now I know that I definitely want to be a human rights lawyer who fights for the rights of disadvantaged persons from all parts of the world.

27/10/2014