Day 4: First Day of Work!!

IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF MY INTERNSHIP!! The whole reason I’m here in the first place! I am a bit nervous. Will it be a bust? Nah, it seemed pretty incredible online. I’m really excited! I’m nervous! I try to look pretty for my first day of work and walk around taking a few deep breaths. I say some prayers and head out the door towards Southern Hemisphere’s offices.

Instead of spending 20 pages trying to describe what they do, I will invite you to check out their website (www.southernhemisphere.co.za). And since probably only my dad and grandma will feel like doing that – here’s the vision statement:

“SHC is a leading, dynamic, socio-economic development consultancy which contributes to creating a better world through strengthening transformative processes for social justice.”

I’m super fortunate that my placement is about 15 minutes walking distance from where I live through the heart of the city. It’s a very interesting walk to say the least. The city is beautiful and I pass many nice hotels and restaurants as well as some very shady characters and smelly puddles of mystery soup. My building is just beyond Green Market Square on Loop Street. I go into the unassuming lobby and take the elevator up to the 8^th floor. I quite like this elevator, it’s a very normal looking elevator and not at all weird/rickety like the ones in my apartment building. When I walk in, I am greeted by Loretta the sweet office manager, and Tiffany, the other intern who is from Kenya (but has lived in CT for about 6 years). I am a head taller than both of them, typical. Loretta shows us around the office - its several desks all in an open space with a wall of windows overlooking the city. There’s a conference room in the back and a little glass cube in the front. And there’s even air conditioning! I have the great fortune of getting the computer in the glass part… where the air conditioner doesn’t reach. But who cares, this place is awesome!!

The consultants are out at a meeting so the morning is a bit slow. I read through some of their information packets. You HAVE to check out profile of work on the website, its pretty incredible – doing evaluations, trainings, program design for the government, the UN, Save the Children, GIZ (this org I’ve seen do stuff in Haiti), some project LEGOs did in the townships, you name it.  I am drooling; completely geeking out everywhere. All their materials are about the types of evaluations they conduct, logic models, trainings for program monitoring and participatory group facilitation, writing proposals, developing research/eval instruments, basically EVERYTHING CAL that I learned last semester in my courses. I’ll even have the chance to learn different administrative/management skills from the consultants who each take on an admin role in the organization – e.g. marketing, HR, finance – since there are only 5 of them in the office most of the time. From the way it looks now, there couldn’t be a more perfect placement for me. It’s a CAL social worker’s dream come true!

We interns have our afternoon meeting with one of the consultants to talk about projects and work expectations. She talks about how everyone works really hard and things get chaotic, this is just up my alley! And then we talk about the first project: it’s a review of evaluations that the South African government has had done on various social projects across departments between 2006-2011. We’re basically evaluating evaluations and will be setting up key informant interviews to find out things like (if/)how the results have been used, get feedback, etc. After explaining a good bit of it, she asks me if I will take the lead and be the project coordinator on this. I want to shout YES, I WOULD LOVE TO, I JUST TOOK A PROGRAM EVALUATION COURSE, OMG THIS IS GREAT. But instead I just tell her that I would be happy to. Yo, I am a project coordinator!! I also get handed a 100 page (heavy duty) evaluation report on a program that seeks to employ and educate disadvantaged people to make them more employable by clearing alien plants that are harmful to the water supply (yes its complicated) that I must read and create a powerpoint for very soon. I’m very excited about this as well, as I will be getting some more serious program eval knowledge and be a big part of helping present the findings back to the government and help them use results.

I want to write an email to everyone back at the field office in the school of social work to tell them this is amazing and they should send every CAL student here ever.

After work, I walk home and meet my friends for pizza. I worked a bit late because of my over-enthusiasm and am the last one there, oops. Afterword, Alison and I spot a sign at a cute bar on the corner across from our apartments advertising peach martinis for R 20. Oh yes, first day of work celebration! I really hope this internships turns out to be as amazing as it seems. Thankful, thankful, thankful.