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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

Link

I decided to share this one with you guys. It is the annual report of Inter Aid Uganda, the organisation in Kampala I was interning in. It gives a good picture of the situation of migration in Uganda and of what is being done by the organisation. Hope you can access it. Enjoy reading!

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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Linking internship and BA thesis

In one of my previous posts I wrote shortly why I went to Uganda for another small internship. Here I just want to explain a little more about this.

Already before I went to Uganda I had a research question for my BA thesis, which of course was very open for changes. I knew that it probably would change when getting more information about the topic and meeting people involved in the issue.

During my stay in Inter Aid I have made some small changes and specified my research question a bit. I want to look at how migration affects the livelihood and food security situation of young (18-35 years old) low SES refugees in Kampala. My research question is a bit inspired of the one of the Metropol research in Uganda and combined with my interest in migration.

I decided to do observational data collection. Through Inter Aid I made many observations from different levels in the organisation. I have been taking part in meetings, administrative work, counselling, trainings, activities, community visits etc. Most important of all then I have been interacting with many young refugees. Many of them coming from Congo, Rwanda, Somalia or South Sudan. On top of all my observations I have been able to do a few semi-structured interviews with some of the youths and the Executive Director of Inter Aid.

My hypothesis was that the livelihood of the refugees is highly affected because of the vulnerable situation they are in. Influenced by their terrifying experiences in their life, loosing family members and friends, running away from war and conflicts, not feeling safe, feeling discriminated and so forth. Furthermore that this would be interlinked with food insecurity.

These are some of the things I will be writing about in my thesis. Please ask me any question if you may have.

#Metropol #GNH #internship2015 #Interaiduganda #Danish #Refugees #health #livelihood

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

Photo

The last photo of me in the dress made of some of the women doing tailoring in the community centre.

This is just a small taster of what I have been doing in Inter Aid.

#Interaiduganda #Metropol #gnh2015 #Internship #health #livelihood #danish

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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An internship inside the internship...

One month ago I left Copenhagen to go to Kampala in Uganda. As I have been working on the issue on low-income women in Kampala throughout my internship, I decided together with my supervisor to write about another issue in Uganda. In spite of my great interest in the migration issues and my plan of taking masters afterwards in migration or refugee studies, I decided to write my BA thesis about migration and health.

With the help of CHAIN, which is one of the contact partners in the research I have been helping in to, I managed to get a 3-week internship at the livelihood desk in Inter Aid Uganda. Inter Aid Uganda is a governmental organisation supported by UNHCR, which council and help refugees coming to Uganda.

This opportunity gave me the chance to get to talk to many refugees, attend workshops and trainings, weekly meetings in the organisation, community visits, counselling and much more. The stories I have heard from the refugees about their life are horrible and terrifying but have helped me to understand many aspects. I been with the roots of the issues we are talking about in Europe now - how to deal with the refugees coming up from Africa. I have talked to the people who were thinking of taking this dangerous trip up to Europe in the hope of finding a safer life. I have just gotten home a few days ago but I still have to rest as everything has been a great adventure but also many touching and moving stories that I have to digest.

The kind of work Inter Aid is doing is what I could see myself working with in the future. I want to work with migration issues, and how to improve the situation of the refugees and migrants around the world.

Uganda is a really good country to do an internship because of more reasons:

1. The language, almost everyone speak English

2. They are used to having interns and they can see the benefits of them so you are appreciated and get work to do

3. If you are not from Africa it is a very different experience and you will get another perspective and another angle on your knowledge.

#Interaiduganda #gnh #2015 #Internship #migration #refugees #health #livelihood #food security

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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How I work to fulfill the learning objectives.

A small video presentation of what I do and how I reach my learning objectives.

#Gnh #Metropol #2015 #UgandaProject #internship

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

Photo

1. In front of our school, which now also is my internship place.

2. At the “office“

3. Ransom working on a paper

4. Joining the bachelor reception for the Danish education and whishing the students good luck for the future

5. Bachelor reception

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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What qualities or characteristics do I see...

...in the people around me? What personality traits, skills, or knowledge are important here? What I learn about my own style of work and working personality?

In my position in this internship, I am mostly working alone on my own tasks. It means that I can be working when I want and where I want, which actually suits me very well. However, most days I am sitting at school working as I like to be able to make a working day, and then after go home and to be off. Also when I am sitting at school I can sit together with other classmates who also are doing same kinds of internship as me. With them I can exchange ideas, we can motivate each other and have breaks together. It is nice to have some “colleagues”!

Furthermore the benefits of sitting at school are that I get to talk to other students and teachers. Like I have had very nice conversations with the previous intern in this Uganda project, who was in Uganda helping with the interviews. She has been able to give me good information and insight knowledge of the project.

During meetings with the research team of this project, talking to my supervisor and the other team members, I get a good inside knowledge of what it means to be doing research and on the same time what it means to be teaching here at GNH. I can see many parallels in the group work of the team to the group work we have been doing during the tree years in GNH.

What I find as important factors so far from taking part in this research process is good communication, planning skills, ambitions, ownership and TIME.

#GNH #Metropol #internship #2015 #UgandaProject #research #finallyalittlesun

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

Video

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Interwiew with my internship host Vanmala Hiranandani

#internship #host #gnh #metropol #ugandaproject

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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My first weeks

During most of my internship I will be working independently as so I have these first weeks.

The first week I spend time on getting to know the data analyzing program Nvivo, which we will use for the interviews, for the transcription and the codings. I was watching tutorials and tried doing some examples.

Most of my time I spend on looking for funds that applies our project. It is like gold digging, you never know when the perfect funding opportunity will appear. It is an interesting task, as I got so much more knowledge about what exist and what exactly the different funds and organisation are doing and are willing to fund. It definitely also helped that Vanmala gave me some ideas, when we met Tuesday, of who could be interesting to look at.

Friday the first week I participated in a meeting with Runa, Ransom, Vanmala and Chen. I mainly just observed and took the minutes at the meeting.

Week two I organised some data from the qualitative data for the team to use. And then I started working on the transcriptions! I knew before I started that it would take a long time but wow it really takes a LONG time. Luckily I find the work till now interesting as the interviews I am working on are quite interesting and makes me understand the project more in depth.

Week two we had another meeting, this time with Hanne, the head of the program, and Chalida as the coordinator. In here it was meant to bring a more clear structure of the process of the project, as some structure in the project was missing. Later that day, the message came out that Chalida will work as the project manager of the project from now on. I think that is going to be good.

Observations: It is interesting to see how the group dynamic is very similar to what I have experienced with the group work during my time at GNH. I have sometimes been really exhausted of doing so much group work but now I really see the point of doing it. Furthermore I have also already got to see how important and useful good project management skills are.

#Gnh #internship #firstweeks #Denmark-Uganda #transcription #funding #projectmanagement

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m13-miralundsgaard-blog · 10 years ago

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Introduction of me and the project I am interning in

So, I was working on a small video to tell you what I am doing but till now I couldn’t get it to work, therefore I have made a small written part for you to read. Hopefully I will get to upload the small video later.

My name is Mira Lundsgaard, I am a Danish student enrolled in the Bachelors program - Global Health Nutrition - Public Health and Food Policy.

This blog is for you to get a grasp of what I am doing during my internship with the Uganda food security project. I am helping our three lovely teachers Runa, Ransom and Vanmala, with Vanmala as my supervisor, in this research project, which looks at how to promote the food security for low-women in central Uganda.

I will be helping in to the process from now on - taking part in meetings and helping where it may be needed. More specific tasks I will be doing is to help with the qualitative data, to transcribe some of the English interviews, which Ransom and Runa has been doing in Uganda recently. Furthermore I will be helping in the process of finding funding for the project. This is an important issue as without funding the project will not be sustainable.

Also I will also be responsible for inviting the team for meetings and to take minutes there.

What I am mostly excited about this project is to get an insight knowledge of how research is in real life. It is very interesting to see how the knowledge from the three years at GNH is being used in practice. I feel very lucky to have the chance to be on board a bit in this interesting project.

#introduction #gnh #internship #welcome

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