"We shared good food together, we had a good time with funny moments and interesting dialogues together and made our experience perfect!."
"We shared good food together, we had a good time with funny moments and interesting dialogues together and made our experience perfect!."
My name is Jana Freund, I am 22 years old and I
am living in Germany. My internship with AIESEC Colombo North during six weeks
was amazing! I was living in a host family with another intern from Barbados,
Nia Braithwaine! I felt really home and I get to know the culture in Sri Lanka
and how they are living there. During the six weeks I worked in the NGO WERC –
Women's Education and Research Centre“. With Nia together we did our own two
big successful projects.
The first one was an fundraising event because of my
birthday during the time in Sri Lanka. Through our NGO we got to know two rural
families in the Slums of Colombo. We took a video of the families to show them
to our family and friends at home. The idea was not to give me a birthday
present but to fundraise money for the two families to give them a new home.
Nia also asked her family and friends to support the project. Finally, it was a
successful event and we fundraised over 1200€ for what the families could move
for sure in their new houses which where build from the government but for the
rural families to expensive to live there.
The second project was our own
workshop for students from the University of Kelania. The idea was to
Empowering young women. Deshani Wherasinghe our excellent buddy from AIESEC
Colombo North helped us a lot. She invited the students, organized them a bus
so that they all could come to our NGO where we did our workshop in the Auditorium.
We fundraised money for the workshop so that the NGO could organize food for
lunch and some snacks and tea. At the end there were around 35 interested and
active students so that we finished the workshop really professional.
During the workshop we talked about The Reality of Women in employment in Sri Lanka“, Why becoming employed is important, Gender Perceptions, What can you do? Also we did some activities: Guess who Self Esteem. After that we told them how other countries are dealing with gender disparities in the workplace. The main factor was Germany and Barbados so that we could explain them our own experiences from at home. Then we went on with alternatives to a 9-5 job. Sometimes we discussed, sometimes we made some practical exercises and at the end the participants had time to Draft an Action Plan in groups. Before we finished the workshop they presented their Action Plan and there we recognized how much they learned during the workshop and it was a successful feeling for all of us!
During the weekend we traveled through the country and got to know a lot of wonderful places and had nice experiences with mostly friendly people. Always when we came back from our weekend trip our host family welcomed us really warmly and on Monday morning the week started again with a good Sri Lankan coffee our host mother cooked for us!
At the end I really have to thank Deshani Weerasinghe because she really did a lot for Nia and me to make my experience unforgettable. She organized us a wonderful host family and a good workplace! In our NGO we were really free to work for really what we wanted to work for, as well as they supported us a lot in everything we did! Moreover Deshani helped us to organize some nice weekend trips, we could call here every day or night time whenever we were in trouble and she helped us in every situation as good as possible! Moreover we shared some good food together, we had a good time with funny moments and interesting dialogues together and she made our experience perfect!
Thank you for all!
I've really enjoyed reading this article, thank you for sharing! I have recently discovered the amazing work that Listen Call Centre do, they have helped fundraise over £150 million on behalf of charities!
ReplyDelete