Busy Summer Ahead

Most internships are not about getting much accomplished. Many of my fellow interns her are complaining about how little they’ve done so far, and many of my classmates abroad are two weeks into the job, still waiting for their projects to materialize. In all honesty it was never my goal to have a big impact over a nine-week period. I just wanted the perspective that working in a capacity constrained government in Africa would afford. Turns out I’ve got my work cut out for me, and I’m loving it.

I have three projects. The first is to oversee the development of the Philanthropy Secretariat website. I’m designing the site’s overall structure and functionality as well as creating the content to give to the technical team. The second is a report on progress against three Clinton Global Initiative Commitments made regarding Liberia last year. The third, and this is the big one, is coming up with a plan for foundation support for ICT investments in Liberia. This could easily materialize into my thesis next year. And on top of all this, I’m working to support the Secretariat Program Manager across the board to make sure that the organization is meeting its goals for 2009. I have to admit, I’d love to have his job.

I’m just three days in but the perspective I was looking for is certainly coming along as well. The inefficiencies are mind-boggling. The biggest issue so far is actually the Internet. It’s down as often as it is up. As the President’s Energy Advisor said to me today you “click and pray” – i.e. pray that your email goes out or that your attachment downloads. If you need to download or upload a document, often you just start it running in the background and check back in a few hours. We share documents with jump drives instead of via email. You always copy your emails before hitting send so they don’t get lost. I’m also unable to print in any significant quantity so have the pleasure of reading a 120-page document on PDF. There is no ink for the printers in many buildings. These are just the technical obstacles. I haven’t encountered the bureaucratic and capacity ones yet.