Navshika Beeharry: Adding accountability and value to foreign volunteering efforts in Africa
Navshika Beeharry is a British-Mauritian blogger, speaker, and interculturalist. She shares her experience of volunteering overseas and advocates for intercultural awareness to be at the heart of charity and aid efforts to improve foreign assistance in the motherland. In this article, she also provides consultancy for sustainability advice, strategy development and/or content creation. Shika, as she is fondly called, believes it is important for NGOs to develop empowering stories of self-managed income/resources to challenge the mindset that success derives from external donors as opposed to the people themselves. In 2015, when she returned home from a volunteer placement in Tanzania, she founded “Becoming Africquainted” as an initiative to candidly recounting the life-changing memories she made, including some difficult observations of when Western intercultural communication goes badly wrong. Since then, it has grown into a platform of its own that provides discussion and resources to all aspiring volunteers or expats, encouraging them to undertake their service overseas responsibly and respectfully. Shika on Intercultural Awareness For Shika, intercultural awareness is an unmissable step that any foreign volunteer must be willing to take to better know their own cultural limitations and how to healthily navigate new ones. However, this must be reciprocated by host communities within Africa too, by ensuring they take responsibility for their own narrative and how they wish for it to be told and remembered long after any volunteer exchange has ended. It will take time to help visitors to form new associations of Africa they see, but the benefits to sewing two-way intercultural connections are fruitful and increasingly necessary for the prosperity of the interconnected world we live in. To be a successful foreign volunteer, Shika believes it begins with an understanding of yourself / skillset and a genuine desire to be of service to someone. Such a person is often thought to be self-sacrificing with care for their wider community and an unrelenting passion to contribute to a cause bigger than themselves. However, to be able to add accountability and value to foreign volunteering efforts in Africa, one needs to; 1. Have a good knowledge of the country and organization whose aims you would like to champion. Each summer in Africa, this ‘higher cause’ has all too often displayed itself as ‘saviourism’, ‘privilege’ and ‘Western ideas’ – to name a few. What usually begins as a selfless summer trip quickly manifests itself into self-serving behavior when culture shock takes over, conditions become unfavorable to live in and personal expectations are not met. These circumstances fuel a type of instinctive desire to fix things that do not exist ‘back home’. Though the intention may come from a good place, the means by which it is executed becomes misplaced and frequently results in misunderstanding and conflict. Why? A lack of intercultural awareness. A large number of young people in the West – diaspora included – are conditioned into thinking that volunteering overseas is a worthy extra-curricular life experience or a means of personal development. These reasons are problematic because they refer to an underlying tone of personal gain that volunteering is based upon. The emphasis is rarely ever to learn about culture itself – something which really should underpin any healthy volunteer exchange. 2. Acquire traits that enable you to observe, recognize, perceive and positively respond to new and unfamiliar intercultural interactions. Some markers of intercultural awareness within international development are: Humility – being receptive to, and accepting of, new and unfamiliar situations Patience – in recognizing that positive outcomes take time to reveal themselves Humanity – acting humanely with a trusted concern for the community being served. These traits are not something we can quantify or expect anyone to learn quickly in a crash-course. But volunteer exchanges can be measured by the quality of relationships being built, along with their participation and respect for our cultures once they arrive. One indication of this lies in how well volunteer behaviors are recognized and reciprocated by the communities which they serve. 3. Volunteers should be given guided self-reflection time. This is to serve like one-to-one inductions in a paid workplace where their observations and experiences are discussed to foster a dialogue which enables them to explain their realities so that they can be better understood. Doing this not only prevents them from distancing themselves from problems they see by claiming ignorance, but it also provides a space for healthy goals to be set, contributions to be assessed and accountability to take place. This is important to help redefine the negative African post-colonial perceptions that many foreign volunteers have unconsciously grown up with. After all, what better way to rewrite the story than if told it ourselves to those who do have a desire to listen, by virtue of visiting the continent first-hand? A good start for non-profit-organisations is to offer their own guides into standards of behavior that outlines an interpretation of volunteer ideas and expectations during their stay. This formalizes the process whilst mitigating the risk of volunteers unhelpfully referring back to their (often biased) perception of problems and methods of solving them. Join our Facebook Live on August 22nd to learn how to drive social change through your business/ Career. Click here to sign up.
9 Great Internship Opportunities for Students in 2019
Across colleges all over the world, students are encouraged to take educational transfers to other schools or gain work experience through a number of programs. All geared towards building new skills, meeting new people and improving on coursework. Doing an internship serves many purposes, including giving you real-world experience that will serve you well when you finish college and enter the workforce. [bctt tweet=”Are you a student looking for internship opportunities in 2019? Here are 9 options to consider … ” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] While considering the right place for your internship, you should ensure to examine all opportunities available to students which can make up their Internship semester. Below are 9 options and opportunities for IT students and for parents looking to recommend these upcoming opportunities below to recommend to your college kids for their Educational exchange or IT semester. Use a Job Board Job boards and forums like Indeed and NGCareers list opportunities available by companies looking for interns. These are easy to apply to and provide a slew of opportunities from all over the country and the world. Residency opportunities Every year platforms like Chimamanda Adichie writing Farafina workshop. Art noise residency programs also offer a number of programs for students graduate and postgraduate alike throughout the year. You can sign up to either of these to get alerts on new residency opportunities. Online Experience/working from home Websites like fiverr.com and upwork.com provide opportunities for people who want to earn money from home. While these tend to give more freelance options, they also serve as great options for IT students. Volunteer writing Platforms like The Sole Adventurer and She Leads Africa have regular openings for volunteer writers. Having such brands on your resume can help boost your CV and give you the opportunity to publish your thoughts and hone your writing skills. You can also intern at She Leads Africa, and gain hands-on experience on how to work with a diverse team and navigate the training period in a fast-paced company. Short Practical Courses Another option for your IT semester is to take a short-term course in a practical course like baking, catering or fashion design that not only allows you an opportunity to learn practical skills, but also a great opportunity for you to earn an additional skill that can make you money immediately. International Volunteering You can become a United Nations volunteer through the UN Volunteers platform which provides a slew of opportunities for students and graduates alike to volunteer and gain work experience as well as meet new people from different parts of the world. Entrepreneurship With business registration now easier than ever, your holiday period presents a good opportunity for you to try your hand at entrepreneurship! Look into setting up a small scale business and creating an opportunity not only for you but for others. Cryptocurrency Trading Cryptocurrency is currently at an all-time high, with bitcoin getting to over $30,000 = B1 during the end of 2017. Try your hand at trading in this new way for little to nothing and explore the opportunity of making more. There are varying classes on meetup offering free bitcoin classes and meetings to get you started. Investment Investing is also another opportunity to learn and earn money. While this is significantly more difficult and requires some money on hand, there are investment options that anyone can hop on. Pork money which is a great way to invest in agriculture, gain new experience in investment as well as make more money.Not to mention pork agriculture investment runs a fairly short cycle. These are a number of options that would ensure that students do not miss out on or waste their Internship Training opportunity as the skills, knowledge, and experience you gain through an internship are fast becoming one of the most important things that employers consider when they hire. You’d be doing yourself a real disservice by not seeking out an internship opportunity before you graduate. Interested in contributing for She Leads Africa? Click here.