Thursday, June 17, 2010

In case you're interested

So basically, I've done a considerable amount of research on organizations that offer internships with international NGOs and I'm always a fan of sharing the wealth.

I have a rather flagrant (and probably irrational) disregard for most study abroad programs that inevitably become a glorified American holiday, and internship programs that take you to Africa to work in an orphanage or Asia to teach English. There are plenty of people already in those countries perfectly capable of taking care of kids or teaching English. In fact, you can probably hire 20 of them for a year with the cost of your plane ticket. While you may get a cool immersion experience by sheer nature of being in a different country, you're less likely to get relevant work experience that validates the expense of the trip as a worthwhile investment for your future career. I'm fully aware that this is probably going to garner a backlash of counter-arguing comments which I will gladly consider, but at this point, I stand by my opinions.

So. If you are like me and wanted to get international work experience with an NGO to learn more about a particular issue, or a particular type of NGO, or a particular approach to development, below are some links to some of the ones that I narrowed it down to and was considering. I'll withhold narrative about them and let you evaluate for yourself :)

The Foundation for Sustainable Development, fsdinternational.org

The Foundation of Goodness (cheesy, I know), unconditionalcompassion.org

Grameen Bank, training and internship programs, grameen-info.org

Oh, and if you want to learn more about my NGO here in India, go to UNNATI.org :)

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