Sydney-Johanna Stevns

Country: Chile
Organization: La Fundación para la Innovación Agraría (FIA) Santiago, Chile

SYDNEY-JOHANNA: "I worked with an organization called La Fundación para la Innovación Agraría (FIA) (or in English, the Foundation for the Innovation of Agriculture) in Santiago, Chile. The mission of FIA is to support a culture of innovation in agriculture that improves the competitiveness of sustainable and inclusive farming. They do this by conducting research on new technologies, providing trainings, and providing funding and assistance to programs that are locally run. Ensuring that farmers in Chile can successfully adapt to climate change is key to ensuring their continued livelihoods and economic growth potential. The project I worked on was helping FIA understand how their adaptation strategies could be improved, specifically by examining how they compared to American and international standards.

I worked closely with staff to understand the projects and visited several farms throughout Chile to better understand how the technologies they promoted functioned and how their programs were operating. My final deliverable was the recommendation that they should improve their programming on the management of natural resources and sustainable development (specifically for infrastructure). This recommendation has formed the basis for a grant application they are submitting to the World Bank to further expand their programs and research efforts in these areas.

When I began my internship I was at a very minimal level of Spanish. After working and living in Chile for two months my Spanish improved significantly, however, my vocabulary now mostly consists of very technical terms about agriculture and development. Because of the initial language barrier it took a while to understand the structure of the organization. My understanding is that FIA does very little of their own program implementation. Instead, they focus on local community empowerment. They recruit and identify small- to medium-sized projects throughout the country that align with their mission and then support them with information, connections, or finances. This is an interesting model because although they have the resources to leverage significant control over projects, they do relatively little of this.

My impression is that this way of supporting projects means that local communities are much more invested in the outcome. Not only does it require less operational work on FIA's end, but it simultaneously helps them achieve one of their goals to spread awareness and knowledge on these issues and tools. I also imagine that this model is much more effective, because if projects are self-initiated by local groups or individuals then they are able to more accurately address their local area's needs as opposed to a large national organization coming in to potentially address an insignificant problem. I find this model very fascinating, both because it makes a lot of sense and because it makes me wonder why this isn't the standard in development initiatives across the world."

Gaspar Rodriguez

Country: Chile
Organization: Corporación La Esperanza (CLE)

Corporación La Esperanza (CLE) offers free outpatient and residential drug rehabilitation services and prevention programs for youth, men, and women in underserved communities across Chile. Seven clinics provide a much- needed lifeline for over 500 patients every year. The goal of Gaspar's internship was to implement a cloud-based solution that allowed them to register and track the most quantitative and key data about their patients. 

Gaspar: “Overall, the internship was a professionally and personally enriching experience. As a native Chilean, I was very excited about working with a local nonprofit and spending time in my home country. I’m very grateful that I was able to apply my background in business development, data architecture, data analysis, and consulting to benefit CLE. My career goals have been, and continue to be, shaped by technology, data, and international development. I hope to use this experience to drive my career of working in the social impact sector abroad. Prior to this, I had never worked in my home country and it was a massive learning experience to understand how the nonprofit and NGO sector is using technology and managing data in Chile. I was also able to meet with and have informational interviews at various organizations that painted a vibrant and rapidly evolving picture of Chile.”

Alexander Kostura

Country: Peru
Organization: AidData Center for Development Policy

Alexander spent the summer serving as an AidData Summer Fellow with the AidData Center for Development Policy. AidData is a research and innovation lab that aims to make development finance data more accessible and actionable. Specifically, AidData collects and analyzes geospatial (or geographic) data to answer the questions: Who is funding what? Where? And to what effect?

Alexander: “My internship with AidData and USAID was an incredibly rewarding experience, for which I am grateful to the Blakeley Foundation. While I did not expect to work with a US government entity, I am glad it was with a USAID Mission abroad because I had the opportunity to interact with multiple NGOs and Peruvian government agencies. This experience reaffirmed my decision to pursue a career with the US Federal government in humanitarian assistance and international development. Previously, I held some hesitation about the impact of USAID. My experiences have taught otherwise. USAID missions are staffed with wonderful people who want to affect change and improve lives. Furthermore, the US government is collaborating with research labs like AidData and creating their own organizations like the USAID GeoCenter in order to innovate and improve their operations. In my career, I hope to be a part of fostering these kinds of partnerships, supporting applications of new technology, and improving international development outcomes."

Robert Helbig

Country: Brazil
Organization: Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS)

Robert worked at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) in Brazil, a German NGO dedicated to political freedom and economic development. Operating out of Rio de Janeiro and funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, KAS has a track record of over four decades of training social entrepreneurs, as well as supporting transparency and socioeconomic development in Brazil. 

Robert: “The time at KAS has been very rewarding for a number of reasons: I learned a lot about project management, stakeholder management and innovation. I was able to improve my Portuguese skills from a basic level to limited working proficiency, so that I can follow my goal to keep focusing on Brazil beyond my time at KAS. Working with my highly experienced colleagues and genuinely kind people, I built a network of professional contacts and strong friendships that will benefit my professional and personal development beyond my time at The Fletcher School.
The time at the Foundation in Rio de Janeiro will have a lasting impact on me, and I also hope that I have become part of the solution to some of Brazil's problems. Of course, a
German NGO can only have a limited impact on the country's development, but I am certain that we are helping to move Brazil into the right direction to become a country of the future. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity that the Blakeley Foundation offered to me - muito obrigado!”

Laura Cuéllar

Country: Colombia & Ecuador
Organization: Ayuda en Acción

Laura worked with Ayuda en Acción (AeA), a Spanish development NGO that has worked for over 30 years in enhancing the welfare of millions of people around the world. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of AeA is its model: rather than deploying its teams on the ground, AeA identifies local NGOs and supports them financially during an average of twelve to eighteen years. Throughout what it defines as “territorial development,” AeA identifies the community’s most urgent needs –from food security to production and/or commercialization barriers, gender issues, education, and social fragmentation– and designs a long-term integral and panoramic agenda to addresses them. 

Laura:  "Every three years, AeA and its local partners outline the overall development goals and lines of action that will be implemented throughout the upcoming three years in what they call the Triennial Intervention Plan (PIT)1. Each PIT is comprised by between eight to twelve micro- projects, which are the specific development initiatives that will be carried out throughout the triennium2.

During my internship at AeA, I was responsible for analyzing the PITs of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay and systematizing the micro-projects that intended to stimulate the community’s local economy. In order to do this, I came up with a series of categories that provided a comprehensive understanding of each micro-project. These categories were: country, Territorial Development Area (ADT)4, local NGO, local NGO code5, micro-project name, micro-project code, description of the micro-project, development goal, path chosen to stimulate the local economy, and analytics6. More often than not, a single micro-project included several analytics and more than one path chosen to stimulate the local economy.  

This internship was my first real-life exposure to development issues. Visiting these communities, talking to community members, witnessing the work of local NGOs, and tying my background in Latin American history to the issues that people are currently facing not only fulfilled me at a personal level, but also reassured me that I want to keep working in the development field after graduating from Fletcher.

Throughout the internship, however, I noticed something that concerned me: the absolute lack of state presence throughout the communities I visited. From schools, to roads, to wells, to everything the communities counted with, had been provided either by NGOs or by the communities themselves. In a way, NGOs such as AeA and its local partners fill voids that states cannot, or do not want to, fill and, hence, have a fundamental role in the wellbeing of these communities. However, there is a limit to what NGOs can do and, unfortunately, their deeds cannot be extended to all poor areas of the countries where they operate.

The oblivion to which states condemn these secluded and impoverished areas is perhaps the main obstacle to their development. In order for long-term self-sufficient economic development to take place, structural changes through which the public sector integrates impoverished regions to the system –for instance through the provision of public services, security, and access to efficient legal and political institutions– are required. Seeking to generate the greatest possible impact in the wellbeing of these communities, this reasoning has, without a doubt, awakened my interest in joining the public sector once I return to Colombia. "

Anna Valeria

Country: Lima

Organization: Endeavor Brasil / Andean Innovation Red

Anna Valeria joined Andean Innovation Red (AIR) early in the organization’s development. She acted as an advisor, identifying the purpose of every company activity to determine relevance to key objectives. Her main objective was to build a map of the entrepreneurial landscape in Lima. She interviewed entrepreneurs, investors, acelerators and university officials involved in fostering entrepreneurship. As a result AIR attracted for the first time the attention of the community by using a new technological platform (i.e. Google Hangouts) that allowed to reach more audience and to create a virtual platform where entrepreneurs and soon-to-be entrepreneurs can share ideas.

Anna: “Today I feel more prepared and confident that I have been gathering the needed tools, both in terms of the academic work and now during the summer with hands-on experience to start building my own startup with social impact.”

Jaime

Country: Brazil

Jaime worked with Mobile Metrix to define high impact health issues to focus on, validated results of government, NGO, academia and community programs and made recommendations relating to the coordination and cooperation of private and government health organizations.

Danielle / Courtney

Country: Peru

Danielle Cooperated with ACCION Investments to analyze their micro-finance portfolio and performance indicators and to recommend client protection policies.

Courtney worked with NGO’s partnering with KIVA, a web based NGO partnering with MFI’s in over 40 countries, interviewing borrowers and evaluated their needs. She also trained local staff about KIVA.

Sihatha & Yanina

Country: Brazil

Sihatha strategized potential cross-sector partnerships for Mobile Metrix. Conducted an environmental scan of existing agencies, identified areas for organizational growth and contributed to a proposal to a major pharmaceutical company.

Yanina was in charge of the interviewing and selecting of mobile agents, preparing training materials performing training of mobile agents working for Mobile Metrix in professionalism, interviewing and survey techniques using PDA based software.