APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Policy document – www.IBIS.dk/eng/index.php?menuId=29&upId=26
[Downloaded on 18th of May 2012]
Internship with IBIS and IBIS' partners
Ibis is running an internship program that enables university students to spend 3 to 6 months at one of Ibis' offices or
with one of Ibis' partner organizations. The purpose of the program is to establish an exchange of knowledge and
experience between Danish university students and the employees of Ibis offices and partner organizations. Students
often possess valuable theoretical knowledge that can be of good use to the projects. At the same time the students have
a unique opportunity to test their knowledge in practice and get a better understanding of development issues and work.
Placements:
Placements are available both with the Head Office in Copenhagen, with a country office or with an Ibis partner.
Sometimes the placements may also consist of a combination of work done in Denmark and abroad. Ibis currently
works in the following countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mozambique, Angola,
Namibia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan.
Tasks for interns:
An internship task often consists of a discrete task defined particularly for the intern, for example conducting an
analysis, collecting documentation on a particular issue or doing an evaluation. However it is also possible that the
intern participates in other types of work such as forthcoming work at a country office or program. The internship
positions are varied and could be relevant for students coming from both the social and natural sciences as well as from
the humanities. Potential interns have studied for example: communication, development, agriculture, public
administration, gender, pedagogy or business. The time frame for an internship position is usually from 3 to 6 months.
Ibis will offer advice and assistance during the entire internship period. However Ibis is unable to offer any financial
support to the interns
Requirements:
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Interns with IBIS must be students and must hold a bachelor degree or a similar degree.
Students who have not yet completed their bachelor may be accepted as interns, in case they have
compensatory experience and competences.
Interns must be residents of Denmark or enrolled at a Danish university.
Interns must be members of IBIS before beginning the internship period. Sign up as a member by calling Ibis
at: 3535 8788.
Interns going abroad with IBIS must have valid travel/healt insurance for the entire period working with IBIS.
Applications:
An application should contain an application proper containing information about the students qualifications in relation
the internship position and ideas for how to conduct the work. Also the application should contain a Curriculum Vitae
and relevant documentation. Applications should be in written in Danish. For placements in Latin America please also
include application in Spanish. For Angola and Mozambique please also include application in Portuguese. For
placements in other parts of Africa please also include an application in English. Applications for placements abroad
must be send electronically in order for it to be possible to send the applications to the place where the internship will
take place. Please send applications and questions by email to internship coordinator Marie Kirstine Jacobsen
kja@ibis.dk.
A description of the different phases of the internship:
Selecting the intern:
Interested students send their applications to the internship co-ordinator at Ibis' head office in Copenhagen. The
applications are then passed on by email to the persons from either the Ibis head office, country office or Ibis partner
1
that have put out the internship posting. These persons short-list the applicants. The internship co-ordinator calls the
short-listed applicants to an interview at the head office. The internship co-ordinator and an Ibis staff member with
knowledge of the field within which the internship is taking place participate in the interviews. The intern is then
selected on the basis of the interview.
Preparation of the internship:
When the intern is selected an internship agreement is elaborated and signed by the internship coordinator and the
intern. Also, a set of Terms of Reference (ToR) is elaborated and signed, the ToR describe the tasks of the intern. The
intern is encouraged to make the initial draft for the ToR which is then accepted or modified by the office or partner
where the intern will work. It is important that the interns tasks are clearly defined in the ToR and that the ToR is
elaborated as early as possible. The clearer an idea the intern has of his/ her obligations the better he/ she can prepare
before arriving and the better he/ she can fulfil the obligations during the stay.
Some interns might wish to use their experiences as a basis for their final thesis (speciale). It is a good idea to make sure
the lines between the work as an intern and the work on the thesis is clear. If the student plans to do much work on the
thesis, the work might be done after the termination of the internship period. These considerations should be a part of
the ToR. For interns going abroad it is a good idea that they work on preparing the stay for about a week at the head
office (provided that there is space at the office). This gives the intern the opportunity to ask questions and find out
more about Ibis' work and structure. Every 6 months a one-day introductory seminar is held at the head office for the
future interns. All the future interns as well as the internship coordinator and other Ibis staff participate.
The internship period:
It is required that there is a contact person at the place where the internship will take place, who will be responsible for
communication with the intern during the stay. At the beginning of the internship period the intern should have a
meeting with representatives of the office or project where he/ she will be working. The office or project is responsible
for informing the intern about practical matters, the security situation of the country and for introducing the intern to the
place where the internship will take place as well as to the contact person. It is important that it is made clear what
expectations the intern as well as the office/ project have to the stay, how the working relations will be and to what
extend the intern is expected to work independently.
Generally the intern will be required to have the ability to work independently and scientifically while the office/project
will be able to provide support regarding practical matters. It is recommended that one or more meetings take place
during the stay where the internship is discussed between the intern, his/ her contact person and possibly others.
Generally there is a good potential for an interesting theoretical/ professional exchange between the intern and the
employees of the project/ office. The intern is required to compose a written report to the office/ project and to Ibis'
internship coordinator.
Further it is recommended that the intern delivers an oral presentation of his/ her work and findings at a meeting at the
office or project before ending the stay. The intern is required to have a valid health and travel insurance during the
stay. He/ she is required to pay for transportation, accommodation, food etc. The intern is responsible for arranging the
personal practical matters relating to the stay although the office/ project can often be of help with good advise. It is
possible to prolong the internship period if the intern wishes so. In such situations, this must be considered and
approved in a co-operation between the intern, the project/ office and the Ibis head office. The final decision must be
taken in the light of project priorities and how the intern’s stay influences the office/ projects possibilities of receiving
new interns.
Follow-up and evaluation:
When the internship period is terminated the intern participates in a debriefing session at the Ibis head office. The
debriefing meetings take place twice a year in February (for fall interns) and July/ August (for spring interns). The
internship coordinator, the relevant desk officers and the member groups participate in the meeting. The interns are
strongly encouraged to participate in Ibis’ member groups and to engage in different information activities after having
finished their internship period. For this reason the interns are encouraged to collect material such as photographs and
interviews during their stay and make contact with Ibis' information staff before or during their stay.
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Appendix 2: Mozambique Internship Advert – (IBIS 2012a)
[Downloaded on 22nd of April 2012]
Mozambique: Communication and Fundraising (readvertisement)
Placement: Mozambique
Application date: April 21, 2012
Time period: From September 1, 2012
Duration: 4 months
IBIS in Mozambique is seeking an intern for the period of September 1, 2012 to the end of
December 2012 to contribute to project development, fundraising and information work within the
thematic programmes.
The intern will be working with the Programme Development Officer at the Regional Office in
Maputo, with possible travels to the provinces of Zambezia and Niassa, where the thematic
programs are implemented.
Background information
IBIS has worked in Mozambique since 1976. Currently IBIS is working with a rights-based and
partnership approach, focusing on capacity building and education. Having the aim of poverty
eradication and popular empowerment, IBIS considers education in rural areas as the key to active
citizenship as well as to the establishment of civil society as change agents.
On these bases, IBIS in Mozambique has decided to focus its development work (2008-2012)
within two main areas of intervention, namely formal primary school education and civil society
development towards citizenship. Consequently, IBIS implements its activities within two thematic
programs, Education and Citizenship.
Within the area of education the intervention is focussed on development of quality education with
introduction of participative teaching methodology and development of democratic school
management. In addition IBIS is developing different approaches for supporting orphan and
vulnerable children’s access to education.
In the area of citizenship, IBIS focuses on different approaches of civic education to strengthen
citizens’ participation in and influence on the democratic processes towards the development of a
socially economically and politically equitable society. Here IBIS has a special focus on women’s
political participation in local governance.
The tasks
The intern will be assisting in the following activities in the Regional Office of IBIS in
Mozambique:
• Assisting in the external communication work of IBIS in Mozambique, in particular in the
development of Newsletters and Website.
• Assisting in the development of project proposals for fundraising in the area of gender, education
and governance.
• Assisting in other organisational tasks.
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Skills and demands
• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, communication or the like.
• At least a basic knowledge of Portuguese.
• Knowledge of development issues.
• Practical experience with working in a busy organisation.
• Experience with communication.
• Experience from travelling, working or living in less developed countries is an advantage.
• Curiosity and commitment.
Additional information
Application, CV (submitted in both Danish and Portuguese) and relevant documentation should be
send via email to Internship Coordinator, [name & email cut out] by April 21, 2012 at 12 noon.
Please read additional information about application requirements before applying on www.ibis.dk
IBIS is unable to offer financial support to interns. However, interns will, as other IBIS staff,
receive per diems when travelling for work assignments from the post station. IBIS will also be
helpful in the process of finding accomodation in Maputo.
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Appendix 3: Internship story 1.
[Translated from original: http://ibis.dk/index.php?menuId=132&upId=8 on 3rd of May 2012]
Dear all today is my 14th day in Liberia, my 10th day in Fish Town and for every day that passes, it feels more and
more normal walking through town. The extreme attention I get every time I move outside does not feel completely
natural yet, but both Fish Town and I is getting used to me being here. And yes, during the 5 months I am spending
here it will become quite natural.
Last Friday I joined an awareness trip for the YEP [Youth Education Pack Programme] centre in River Gee District
together with the centre manager, James and three staff members. In a month the YEP centre will close the
registration of the 70 lucky students between 15 and 25 who are starting in the next term. As such, in the following
week the possibilities in the YEP centre will be announced (and which, by the way, are completely free).
Vi drove down the red, pothole-filled mud roads, through different villages, and spoke with the mayors and the old
men and women about how important it is that the young, without schooling, use this opportunity; ”even the toddlers
can come – there are people to attend to the kids while the mothers are in school.”
There was huge support and gratitude from everyone we spoke with, and as though that was not enough we
eventually went on air on the radio where James excelled with the best conviction. It was exciting to come along – to
experience what it is like working in the field – and I am not surprised that local IBIS employees seem very competent
and engaged in their work.
Such was the first mail I sent to the curious Danish home front. As it were, it was difficult for some to understand why
I was throwing myself into the middle of the jungle more or less on my own, while others thought it was exciting and
interesting. There were times when I had to be reminded why I was sitting exactly there, and not in a bigger city with
other foreigners with a somewhat stable internet connection, working sanitation, and with food that would not
necessarily make my head red like a tomato every time I prepared pasta over my charcoal stove… But precisely that
fact was also a part of the experience I wanted to embark upon and it has definitely been a learning experience being
an intern in Liberia.
The young people that I got acquainted with in Fish Town have made a great impression on me; like for example 21
year old Henry who before his 10 months at the YEP center “did nothing” and was dependent on his old
grandmother’s support. Today he is starting his own carpenter enterprise together with a handful other young people
from the YEP center in Fish Town and can add to the family income.
”what was the best part of going to the YEP?”
- ”No one can take from me what I have learned. I can live off being a carpenter for the rest of my life and one day I
would like to teach someone else what I have learned. I want to save up something good for myself.”
What the last statement entailed remained unknown which definitely did not make me less curious about what the
youth in Liberia dreams about.
5
Appendix 4: Internship story 2
[Translated from original: http://ibis.dk/index.php?menuId=132&upId=8 on 3rd of May 2012]
As an intern with IBIS in Ghana I worked closely together with one of IBIS’ local partners, Wacam. Wacam is a sort of
grass root organization for the communities (often farming communities) that are affected by gold- and oil extraction.
During my stay I got close to Wacam and on several occasions out on trips to the mining communities and here I am
telling about my visit to Tarkwa and Prestea where, among other things, I met Wacam’s volunteers and illegal gold
miners.
Under the shadow of a tree which looked like an overgrown Japanese Bonzai tree sat a small group of illegal miners
waiting. Dominic Nyame, who showed me around in the mining town Prestea with 50,000 inhabitants, knew them
well after, for a long time, having been actively involved in raising awareness around the social and environmental
problems that the mining industry is causing in Prestea.
Dominic is a member of a local association in Prestea which cry out about the problems that the mining industry is
creating locally, work for better living conditions for the local community, and are also a part of Wacam. Wacam is a
Ghanaian NGO whose vision it is, in the long run, to become a social movement which speaks the mining
communities’ case in the world, and they have a large network of volunteers in civic societies in the Ghanaian mining
areas. That is why I went to Prestea, which is in an area where there has been a large growth in the mining industry in
recent years and which is one of the first places Wacam started operating.
Arrival at Tarkwa
After 6 hours of sweat dropping and occasionally nerve wrecking driving on holed roads from the capitol Accra along
the coast and some way into the country we ended up in a hilled rainforest area in Ghana’s Western Region. Here, the
mining industry has made its clear mark. Sealed off areas owned by mining companies, farming projects meant to give
new income opportunities to farmers, several schools sponsored by the mining companies, warnings about coming
explosions on signs along the road, and enormous mining quarries were some of the most physical signs of the mining
industry’s presence.
On day one I arrived at Tarkwa, the city in which Wacam opened its first office, before they moved to Accra where
their current main office is situated. Here, I met a local volunteer, Mohammed, who would show me around.
Mohammed had moved from northern Ghana to Western Region to find fork as a farmer. But the community he had
moved to had been taken over by a multinational mining corporation and that is why he became active with Wacam.
The volunteers I have met at Wacam, have almost all of them become active because they have lost their land.
Brøndby jersey
On day no. 2 Mohammed and I drove to Prestea where we passed a guy on the road in a Brøndby jersey (an old model
from when Reebok was sponsor). I threw myself out of the car to get my photo taken with him, but he did not want
his photo taken with the eager Dane – a rather absurd experience.
Religion
In Western Region most people are Christian, but a lot of people from the poorer Muslim regions have migrated to the
area to find work as farmers or as gold miners. In Ghana it is impressive how Musllims and Christians live together in
peace – cultural differences are seen as much as an expression for where in the country you are from as it is seen as
an indicator for your religion.
Prestea with Dominic
When we reached Prestea we met up with Dominic Nyame and a group from the local Wacam office who told us
about the impact of mining on the local community. Among others we met a man who had been injured by gunshots a
year and a half earlier in a clash between military/police on the one side, and a group of local miners on the other.
Dominic showed us a building that had collapsed due to vibrations from mining explosions. Prestea is a strange town
where all trade and income stems from mining – either from one of the two mining companies in the town, or from
illegal gold miners. There is a cosmopolitan atmosphere because the town is full of different Ghanaian ethnicities,
which means that there are many languages spoken in the streets.
On day 3 I woke up early in the morning in a hotel in Prestea to go for a walk with Dominic. Before I left I had a typical
hotel breakfast containing egg-sandwich, a cup of nescafé, and some pineapple. Wearing trousers and a long sleeve
shirt in 30 degrees, I managed to push through a morning walk with Dominic where he showed me around in Prestea
6
and explained how the mining industry had changed his home town. Dominic was originally from the area and belongs
to the royal family of chiefs. As such he can criticise the local chiefs’ handling of the mining without them being able to
dismiss him easily. Dominic believes that the chiefs have been overlooking the costs that the mining has had for their
community and been too caught up in the short term benefits they have enjoyed.
Illegal Gold Miners
After having walked around for about an hour we were suddently standing under the strange overgrown bonzai-tree
with a group of illegal miners, galamsays (from English: “gather and sell”). They told me that they were hanging out
under the tree because there was nowhere to find work at the moment, that the mine companies’ guards would
attack them violently if they attempted to enter areas, that had been left by the mining company, to find remaining
gold, and that they extracted gold from the gravel-like sand dust by rubbing mercury into it using their bare hands or
feet (!) and then pushing the sand away and separating gold and mercury using a tea towel.
They told me that some had children or were having children, although they barely had any money – who was going
to support that child was up to God. Every now and then when someone found a good place to find gold he would
invite the others and then they would work hard until the vein was depleted. If someone had money he would share it
with the others – it is expected that you care for each other in that way. A lot of them had been working for the
mining company before they went from underground mining to quarrying which caused a lot of jobs to be lost.
After having left Prestea, we went by some more communities the same day and met people from farming
communities who were in some very different situations. Prestea is special in that mining has taken place there for
more than 50 years whereas farming communities where large mining companies have only been present in a few
years are experiencing completely different organizational problems. Fortunately, Wacam and other Ghanaian NGOs
have succeeded in making some of the problems (and abuse) that are happening in the local communities known in
the media and according to Dominic Golden Star Resources, the largest mining company in Prestea, has realized that
they can no longer do as they please towards the local population.
On day 4 we went home to Accra. It was a long trip where I was on the sunny side in the car which caused my right
arm to be extra tanned for more than a week. But there was enough to think about, so I did not have time to consider
it on the way back. To have the opportunity to speak with these people was an extraordinary experience – not
something that is easily forgotten.
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Appendix 5: Internship Story 3
[Translated from original: http://ibis.dk/index.php?menuId=132&upId=8 on 3rd of May 2012]
In the spring of 2011 I travelled to Sierra Leone to work as an intern for IBIS for six months. I was to work at the office
in the Kono district where the majority of IBIS’ programs take place. Six months earlier I had finished my bachelor
degree in international development studies (international udviklingsstudier), so I felt that it was time to go get some
practical experience.
So, I left with great expectations, a glowing inclination to work and the wish to get to know the country and its people.
I wanted to learn the local language, Krio, climb the highest mountain in West Africa, and much more.
Very well. When I arrived at Koidu, the main city in the Kono district, the first long time was spent on taking in all the
new impressions. To my great relief I quickly settled among my new colleagues at the office and I experienced it as a
safe and inspiring place to learn about working procedures, themes, and issues. And maybe most importantly; how to
do my job in a way which corresponded with local norms. Both internally at the office, but especially in order to move
around outside the safe environment of the office, whether it was meeting partner organisations, citizens, politicians,
or local leaders.
In theory I was primarily attached to the governance programme, but in practise I ended up working with the
educational programme almost just as much. I had a range of tasks under the former in the beginning, but after a few
weeks into my stay I began working with what was to become my main task; that is a pilot-project about volunteer
work among the young people in the city. Working on that I got a very concrete and practical insight into how
partnerships can work, including the challenges that are connected with a programme with young volunteers, who are
already very tied up with other things and an everyday life that is far from easy. Together with a range of local youth
associations we used three months creating attention around volunteer work, developing the project, and evaluating
it.
The project eventually took many working hours and it was certainly not boring. The young volunteers would drop by
on a whim, papers had to be copied, there were discussions, weekly meetings to be held etc. There were periods
where I was also out following up on activities on a daily basis. Of course it took up some time for me to find out how
to handle all the many new situations and issues that kept arising. It was tough but first and foremost; exciting and
educational.
Working with the young volunteers has been very giving and inspiring. I experienced a great enthusiasm mixed with
frustration over the fact that the many wanted activities demanded both a great deal of time and money. Due to this,
we constantly had to reassess our approach and activities in order to find durable solutions.
The project also offered some close friendships and these people came to mean a lot in my life in general. When I was
not working I would often spend time with them, at church on Sundays, walks, conversations, and generally doing
what there is to do in Koidu.
Mountain climbing unfortunately never happened, as being a tourist can be very challenging in certain areas of Sierra
Leone, especially if you have limited time. My broken and half-hearted Krio, as it happened, remained an internal joke
at the office. But that only offers good reason to return one day.
The internship in Sierra Leone completely met up with my expectations to gain an understanding of working at a
programme office, as well as learning what it means to work with partnerships in practise. It has been demanding and
at times a heavy responsibility being an intern with IBIS, but that has only made it more giving.
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Appendix 6: Internship Story 4
[Translated from original: http://ibis.dk/index.php?menuId=132&upId=8 on 3rd of May 2012]
I arrived in Maputo with a thousand plans in my head; I was looking forward to the internship tasks, I wanted to learn
to cook Mozambican food, dance Mozambican dances, and meet a lot of Mozambican friends. In short, I wanted to
embrace everything and get to learn Mozambique from the inside.
The beginning of my active and social life in Maputo was interrupted by an unforeseen factor: Tiredness. The entire
purpose of my presence in the city was the communication work with IBIS. A job I had dreamt of doing for a long time,
and that I was now able to throw myself into. I had great motivation to provide my best in the office and not least to
learn all that I could. The eight hours in front of the computer every day, the moist heat, the language, and all the new
impressions overwhelmed me completely.
During the first two months my energy level stretched as far as the work and not much else. However, little by little, I
realized that Maputo was a lot different than I had imagined, especially the expat community (foreign advisors from
other parts of the world) was hard to wrap my head around. A lot of the foreigners working with development in
Maputo were humble and dedicated people, but there were also foreigners who isolated themselves and did not
seem to be particularly interested in Mozambique and the Mozambicans on anything but a theoretical level. It was a
peculiar social climate to be in and at the same time be seen as a mulungu, a white person, on the street. Being
European suddenly meant a lot of things that I found hard to identify myself with.
The closed-ness found in the expat community and the great difference between Mozambicans and foreigners made it
a lot harder to get the Mozambican culture under one’s skin than I had imagined. Furthermore, Maputo’s center is
situated as a small island in the middle of a different context. I lived on the 19th floor in a high-rise building and had
both supermarkets and a shopping center right around the corner. If you move outside Maputo’s city limit the urban
landscape quickly changes from tall square buildings to low brick houses and sandy roads. The rhythm and
atmosphere is remarkably different. The contrasts and separation made me feel isolated.
Even though I met many inspiring and open people in general, it was my friendship with two Mozambican girls of my
own age that gave me renewed energy and enthusiasm in relation to my stay. Through long conversations I began to
get a feel for the Mozambican culture, world view, and not least humor.
The insight I got through my work from a ‘development perspective’ via the communication work on the one side and
a range of social situations on the other, gave me a collection of new perspectives.
I especially got a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be overcome when doing development work,
which is indispensable to me in my studies. On a personal level my internship was an enriching experience that offers
many touching meetings with a harsh reality, warm people, new rythms, and ways of understanding life.
My stay in Maputo was harder than I had imagined prior to leaving. But the fact that it was tough caused me to
understand more, both about myself and about Mozambique. It was a powerful experience that I would not be
without.
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Appendix 7: Internship Story 5
[Translated from original: http://ibis.dk/index.php?menuId=132&upId=8 on 3rd of May 2012]
We are sitting at Sierra Leone’s national stadium. The place is packed to burst but that does not prevent people
outside from trying to get in. Our little gathering consists of roughly 10 people more or less an equal number of
foreigners and locals. The soccer field below us is packed with people who are dancing, doing magic tricks, and playing
music. Sierra Leone is celebrating its independence day and this year the festivities have been given an extra notch
since it now 50 years since Sir Milton Margai became the country’s first prime minister.
But the question is whether or not Sierra Leone has anything to celebrate. The country is consistently in the bottom of
the HDI-indexes, buildings are in ruin, and beggars without arms or legs constantly remind you of the brutal war that
officially ended 10 years ago. Moreover, a whole generation of young people suffers from unemployment rates of
about 65 percent. At the same time most of the nation is fighting an unheard of high analphabetism and an
educational system which leaves much to be desired.
Through my internship with IBIS I had an opportunity to work with some of these issues. Especially an evaluation of
IBIS’ vocational skills training programmes were something of an eye opener. Sierra Leone has, in principal, free
education for the younger generations. However, totally worn down schools, somewhat corrupt teachers, and user
fees on books and uniforms means that going to school can become quite expensive. This meant that a large part of
Sierra Leone young population was lacking basic writing and math skills. In was interesting in this respect to see how
IBIS, recognising that many of the young had outgrown the educational system, launched the teaching of skills that
were actually useful in the rural areas where academic education rarely has a purpose. Even though some of the
students did not seem to gain huge benefits from the teaching, the project as a whole seemed as a refreshingly down
to earth attempt at pulling a generally uneducated population group out of poverty.
At the same time IBIS is working zealously to achieve decentralisation of the educational sector. This has, as is the case
with most public sectors in Sierra Leone, traditionally been run from the capital Freetown and the government there.
In this area IBIS and partners have managed to link a development of the educational sector with democratic
development, and as such influence has reached far longer into the rural areas than has previously been the case.
Personally I found the work in mineral and oil extraction to be the most interesting and at the time of writing, I am
working on my master thesis which has its outset in my work with IBIS. In this respect, the contacts I obtained during
my internship have been indispensable. Especially IBIS’ seriousness about their work has meant that you are taken
serious as soon as you mention the organisation. This has meant that I, both during my internship and fieldwork, have
had access to agencies that would have been out of reach in Denmark.
IBIS is not the only organisation in Sierra Leone that is serious about their business. The population is becoming
increasingly engaged in the country’s development and perhaps for that reason the celebrations in the end of April
should not be seen as an anniversary, but as the beginning of the next 50 years which, hopefully, could be influenced
by a genuine will and ability to pull Sierra Leone from its role as a post-conflict nation and into the role as a country
where the population to an increasing degree sees itself as the driving force behind development.
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Appendix 8: Interview 1
Interview symbols:
I = Interviewer
R = Respondent / Interviewee
S = Second interviewer
Country
Mozambique
Duration of the interview
37:52 min
I: Right, well I suppose we better just get started. So, basic information: just tell us a little bit about yourself: name,
your gender, not your gender –I can guess that- and what country you went to?
R: I’m 26; I was 25 when I was in Mozambique on a Communication and Fund Raising internship. I study psychology,
my master is in Copenhagen.
I: Copenhagen Uni?
R: Yes. I was in Maputo for four months.
I: OK, so you were in Maputo. What did you do there, exactly?
R: I was a Communication and Fund Raising intern at the country office, so, I was based in the office in Maputo, and
that is where I went every day, so it was like regular office hours and regular office work. I did some travelling, only
once going up North in the country side to visit one of the projects. My tasks were mainly communication; I barely did
anything related to fund raising. It was writing articles for the web site, for the newsletter and producing some films
about IBIS work; so, it was producing communication material and updating the Mozambican web site.
I: All right, well. Why did you choose to go to Mozambique?
R: You mean the country specifically or this internship?
I: Why did you end up in Mozambique?
R: I applied for the position in Mozambique because one thing was timing: I knew that I wanted to do an internship
and that I wanted to do it with IBIS and the timing was best with Mozambique. Because I could wait until September
to go and it was only 4 months. And also the tasks seem like something I could handle or learn and also I was kind of
interested in learning. Also, my impression was that it was a relatively easy country to go to; compared to the
internships they had to offer, at that semester they had internships in Sierra Leone and Liberia. So I thought that this is
the least hardship internship.
I: How did you know? How did you know that this is the less troublesome than Sierra Leone?
R: I don’t know, just by knowing people who lived there and travelled there and knowing people who had been to
Liberia and also from reading some of the internship stories from the former interns. But also, I just knew that Maputo
would be a relatively easy place to go to.
I: There is another question in that relation. You said that you look at other IBIS internship offices as well, in the
beginning. How did you know about IBIS and how did you find the internship post?
R: I have been thinking for some time doing an internship, just Google-ing internships in Africa. I guess that’s how I
found IBIS, so for a few semesters I got their mails with jobs posting and internships placements. So I’ve seen these
announcements for a few semesters. From reading about this, my impression was that they had a very clear
internship programme and they were used in sending out interns. And that’s the reason why I was kind of focused on
that I should be with IBIS. It seems that they kind of had a structure on how to do these things.
I: You said you looked for internships in Africa in particular. Why the interest into Africa?
11
R: I’ve been to Africa before. I was also looking other places, also Latin America and Asia. But I was kind of drawn into
Africa. Because I’ve been to South America a lot, so Africa was still kind of new to me. And of course I was interested
in Developmental work and I was also specifically interested in going to post conflict areas and somehow even though
it is not recently post conflict but, there is relevant to Mozambique and many places in Africa.
I: Let me see where I am in my notes here. What were the main challenges you encountered there? It could be
anything, not just work related, anything. What was the biggest hurdle when you arrived?
R: The biggest hurdle? Probably related to the internship. I had some problems getting started with my tasks,
especially the ones related to making the films, because it was the first time they were doing this in Mozambique so
they didn’t have all the software, the proper computer, all these practical stuffs. All that was not completely ready for
me and it took a long time to get it all set. It’s probably because I didn’t understand how much responsibility I had to
take for myself. First off all, I was expecting that it all will all be there when I arrive, and it wasn’t and I was expecting
that there would be somebody in Denmark taking charge of it, an IT person and it felt that the communication wasn’t
very good. It turned out being a big frustration, because I couldn’t get started with the movie editing until I only had a
month left out of my internship, so there was definitely an element of me not understanding how much I should be
pushing for this from the beginning.
I: How come you had these expectations? Weren’t you briefed before you came down there, on how the office works?
R: Yes, but my impression was that someone in Denmark had already done all the preparations for this. It was a new
thing that they wanted all the offices to be able to edit movies, so my impression from the preparations in Denmark
was that all these things were taking care of it and we only had to do the actual tasks. So, it wasn’t my impression that
I should be pushing for getting the stuffs necessary for doing my tasks.
I: So, now we are moving into preparations. You mentioned you were not aware of this from your preparation in
Denmark. What was your preparation in Denmark? What kind of training or introduction did you have?
R: We had like a two days training, or introduction, whatever, with all the interns. Last summer, we all met with the
internship coordinator. We had meetings and briefings with several people from head office. And that was very
general, someone talking about IBIS history and all that, and somebody talking about communications and what they
expected in terms of producing material for head office. So, it was kind of a seminar with many different topics for
two days. And then I had a briefing with a regional coordinator, right before going. The problem was that I think she
wasn’t the one supposed briefing me, but people left and someone was in a six month sick leave and so it was kind
of... I remember it being a bit complicated to get all the briefings, the people I spoke to had no idea about my work.
Even the person who interviewed me wasn’t really... I was supposed to be interviewed by three people: by the
internship coordinator and on Skype by the communication officer in Mozambique and someone working in Denmark
with the region. Two of them were sick that day, so it was a 3rd person who really didn’t know anything about what I
was supposed to do. And in Mozambique the person who briefed me before going had no idea about my tasks, so... I
wasn’t able to speak to my boss in Mozambique; we were only in contact by email. So, this meant that I didn’t have
the chance to speak with someone who could tell me very specifically about my tasks until I got there.
I: Who did you speak with? If there wasn’t anyone who knew about your field of work in Mozambique?
R: I spoke to the former intern when she got back in the summer. We met, so she could tell me a little bit, she gave me
an impression on how it was along. I tried, over e-mail and chatting with the communication officer in Mozambique,
but, yes, it was limited.
I: OK, you said you spoke with the former intern before going. Did you maintain contact, in case you had question, once
you got there? How that worked?
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R: Yes, she was very helpful. Before going she helped me finding a place to stay in Mozambique. I do not remember if I
used her or anything while I was there, but she made me feel like I could. Yes, so she was available if I had any
questions.
I: So, there is one thing: you said she gave you an impression on how it was down there. Was that something you’ve
been lacking before you got in touch with her? Or how would you say that was?
R: Yes, I think so, because I wasn’t able to speak to anyone who actually had real contact with the office in
Mozambique, but also I could ask her more things than I would ask someone working in IBIS; you know, I could ask her
stupid questions: like what about lunch, or practicalities with which I wouldn’t waste the time of the regional
coordinator. It was more like getting a more personal impression, not only of the office, but also about the daily life in
Maputo, so I used her for other things than I would have used IBIS staff.
I: There must have been some practical issues regarding communication. What did you do in terms of accommodation,
practical issues?
R: They were very clear that was my own responsibility; so there was the former intern that helped me with the
accommodation, I also met with the former intern before her. So they explained to me all the stuff: like when you get
there, how you get home, what should you bring from Denmark, so IBIS office did not assist with any of that. In terms
of practicalities, it was only in the first day of work: my boss picked me up and took me to the office and I had a
briefing with her after arriving where she gave me some good advice about safety, health and stuff like that. But all
the preparations: they were very clear that was up to me.
I: You mentioned these daily life things that the former interns told you about. I was just thinking of the local customs,
how to get from A to B. Was that also on your own or through the old intern?
R: I think that Maputo is not very different; in many senses it is very European. So, it wasn’t really an issue or a big
need, like things you should really remember to do or not to do. It is pretty easy going. So, before going to the country
side, I did have a briefing with my boss, there were more things there, but it wasn’t anything like really surprising
about Maputo.
I: So OK, we spoke a bit about how the preparations went with IBIS. What about yourself, what did you do to prepare
yourself on your own, before you went?
R: I did some readings and, let me just think; I’m not really sure what I did. I got a few books that someone
recommended to me: both like practical travel stuff and also history and, besides from that I think that I just went.
I: Went for it?
R: Yes.
I: OK. What about another point: social interactions. Who did you socialise with when you were there? We are just
moving into how it was like while you were in Mozambique.
R: It was very much with the international crowd. I lived with an Italian girl and her Mozambican boyfriend, so through
her I met up with the interns from the Danish embassy, we were in touch. Through them it was just getting to this
expat crowd of young people, interns and stuff. So, it was mostly that. I had some few Mozambican friends some of
them through the former intern- she put me in touch with them, some and from the Mozambican guy I worked with,
but mostly it was international crowd.
I: How did you end up finding this accommodation with this Italian and her boyfriend?
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R: The former intern knew someone, I think that she asked around about a room for me and she found this.
I: I get the feeling that most of the information you had before you went there, about life in Mozambique, you got most
of it through the former intern and on your own accord, in a sense. What about when you were there, what was the
communication with IBIS, along with the interns, was that mainly professional, evaluation along the road, what could
you say about that?
R: With the country office or head office?
I: Both in a sense, I guess. How was the communication going with the head office back home in Denmark?
R: I think like that there was not really any communication, maybe I wrote an email when I got there and maybe one
when I left. When I left they got my report and whatever. And I was a little bit in touch with some people from the
head office, about practicalities, about the movie editing for example or about something for the web site. So there
was almost no contact. With the country office I had ... every month I had an evaluation with my supervisor and sorry,
what was the question exactly?
I: No. That was kind of the question. What was the evaluation communication that was going on between you and
IBIS, both to Denmark and national?
R: Yes, we had meetings once every month. And I shared the office with my supervisor; actually she went in a
maternity leave after 2 months so she was there half of the time and the half of the time I was reporting to other
people. But yes, the evaluation meetings were very general: what I was doing in Mozambique, if I had any questions,
also with my tasks, if I was happy with them, if she was happy with what I was doing, if we needed to change anything,
make priorities. My supervisor was very structured about that and she took it pretty seriously.
I: Was your supervisor Danish?
R: Yes, she is Danish.
I: How was the office in general, was it mixed with Danes?
R: It is mixed, mostly Mozambican. The director, the administrator and communication officer are Danish and the rest
are Mozambican. So maybe like 10 Mozambican and 3 Danes.
I: OK. So, you mentioned you were at a two days introduction in the beginning before you went into your internship.
What about when you came home, what was the evaluation? Other than handing in your report. Was there anything
like evaluation afterwards?
R: There’s supposed to be, but I haven’t heard right back from her. I sent the report while I was still in Mozambique,
right before leaving and then I was supposed to send an internship story for the web site and a country guide for the
next interns, with the practical information. I was a bit slow, she only got it maybe a month ago and haven’t heard
back. She told me that we are having an evaluation meeting, a debriefing when I sent her all these, but I’m still waiting
for her.
I: There was one thing I wanted to ask: the country guide. Did you receive a country guide from a former intern when
you came down, or do you think this is something new?
R: I actually didn’t get a country guide from IBIS. I only got it because I was directly in touch with the former intern,
not with the one who just came home, but with the one before her. So, when I spoke with her she asked me about the
country guide and I told her that I had no idea about it, so she send it to me. So, I didn’t get that from IBIS.
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I: Just to get it clear: it is made for IBIS by you guys when you leave.
R: Yes, it is kind of mandatory; being one of the things they ask from us. So yes, I found that a little bit surprising.
I: Odd?
R: Yes it is odd.
I: OK, all right. I actually don’t have so many more questions. You’ve been pretty clear. If there is anything that you
want sort of elaborate in relation to going on in the internship. Sort of your impression of IBIS and what was like being
an intern with them.
R: I would have to say that they did live up to my expectations in terms of how they structure it. That they have a very
clear idea of what an intern is. Instead of going to some organization and asking for an internship and then you make
up something and you go and you have to find out by yourself. It is nice that you have a clear structure and the nice
thing about IBIS in Mozambique is that they always have communication and fund raising interns, it’s always the same
position, and all is very concrete and you know what you were supposed to do. On the other hand it is maybe,
because it is communication and you mainly focus on the website and on the Danish website it’s very isolated from
the work of the rest of the office. So it was very difficult for me to get in. I wasn’t really incorporated in the other
staffs work; I only worked with the person working with the communication who was Danish. So I think that is an
important point about this internship.
I: Do you think that this was specific to your internship position in Mozambique, or do you think it might be a general
thing with their interns?
R: I do not know, it could be general, because all the internships are kind of like an outsider position. If it is not
communications, it is very often like a research internship, which I imagine it would also be very individual. Maybe
they do also have some internships that are in the systems, someone in the office. I would say that working with the
website is probably made it to be isolated.
I: Well the reason I asked really is that: when we send out these emails to the different interns from the last couple
years, almost everyone – first of all everyone replied that was very nice- but almost everyone immediately said that
this is a really good idea, so we had an idea that people might have some recommendations, if not for IBIS, at least for
the next volunteers. Well pros and cons, I guess.
R: I do not know... For me it was a very positive experience, but I would also have to say that this internship had
nothing to do with my studies so I didn’t have very high demands of what I should get out of it. For me it was just the
experience of being there and learning some communication stuff and it was fun getting into movie editing and
writing articles, but I was also very relaxed about it. If it’s very much related to your studies, your degree and you have
to write a report based on it or whatever or if it’s related to your thesis I imagine there could be more issues, more
recommendations. I think it is a bit special that I’m studying psychology.
I: How that fit in your studies? I mean: did you finish with psychology and change or did you take a gap year and do
this, and you are back to psychology?
R: I took a gap semester, before doing it. Now I’m doing my real internship in psychology. It fit in very well, in a sense
that I really wanted to pull of my studies a little bit and get a very different experience, not psychology specific, so it fit
in very well as a gap from whatever I’m doing.
I: Well, that is a reason as well.
15
R: Yes.
I: I do not have any more questions. But, maybe Alexandra has some follow up questions.
S: I do. You said in the beginning that you knew that you wanted the internship with IBIS. Did you ever consider
comparing IBIS with any other NGO?
R: Yes, I also looked with [name of a NGO]. But, let me just think. I do not know if maybe IBIS just had some more
attractive internship positions, and also IBIS is very known and very serious, but also knowing that IBIS is family goal
organization.
S: OK. Did you ever feel that IBIS is treating you too formal? Because you said you couldn’t ask them random question. I
refer to your communication with the head department.
R: Maybe a little bit. Maybe not too formal, but...on one side it was a bit informal with the people I spoke in the head
office, on the other hand, with the communication officer in Mozambique I felt like it wasn’t really time to talk, there
were quick questions and that is it. Maybe it was little bit formal with her or maybe a little bit impatient, I do not
know.
S: OK. And one more question: did you ever consider the internship as a big or a heavy responsibility, or your tasks
there?
R: No, not a big responsibility that keeps me worried or keeps me up at night. It was very nice to be responsible for
very specific things but without having too much responsibility towards other people. I now understand, maybe
because I’m a psychologist now. It’s another kind of responsibility, but you know that my responsibility was just to get
things out on the website, that being what I was working. Nothing that would really affect anyone else. Of course
there was some responsibility in terms of: I did a lot of interviews with children, of course you have some
responsibilities regarding the ethical considerations, but I also felt that I wasn’t alone with these responsibilities, all
the time I had someone I could consult.
I: Right. Well that concludes all we had.
Appendix 9: Interview 2
Country:
Ghana, Accra
Duration of interview:
45:38
I: Let’s start with some basic info. If you could just state your age, and what you are doing in your studies and so on.
R: Sure. I’m 24 years old. I’m a student of International Business and Politics at Copenhagen Business School. I’m a
part of the master’s programme. I actually did my internship with IBIS as the first thing of my master’s degree. I had
already done the bachelor’s degree so I got special permission to start the internship. It is not really a part of the
programme but I did it instead of electives. I didn’t have to do an internship.
I: Did that prolong your studies?
R: Yeah. If I had been at home I would have gotten fifteen ECTS-points more than I will get for this. You can catch it up
if you want to its just easier this way.
I: Let’s focus on your internship. First of all, where did you go and when did you go?
R: I went to Accra, the capital of Ghana. I went for five months. I was working on IBIS’s Africa against poverty
programme as the local intern there. It was kind of a special situation which we could spend a lot of time talking about
16
if you want to get into the details. The AAP programme only has one staff member, which is the programme
coordinator. That person got a scholarship in the States after I got my internship, so I actually lost my internship. Then
IBIS reoffered it to me. This time, with more interaction with one of the local partners. A partner NGO in Ghana called
Wacam, working with mining communities, mainly subsistence farming communities, but also other kinds of
communities affected by mining. Basically, in regards to the new internship offered to me, I was told that I was going
to be working closely together with this organisation; Wacam. That meant that I had a lot of independence. I was able
to just kind of work with them according to the Terms of Reference that I had been handed out. I guess you are
familiar with IBIS’s system of Terms of Reference.
I: Yes, it is an agreement you sign in the beginning of your internship.
R: Exactly. Those terms of reference are supposed to kind of guide what you do and the aim of your whole stay; what
you are supposed to learn. Not exact, but sort of the overall objective of what you are doing. Those objectives could
be rather defined. Anyway, I didn’t have a supervisor in Ghana to begin with, I only had an intern coordinator which is
just someone who is helping you with practicalities, helping you settle in Ghana, getting you to interact with the staff
and help you if you have any issues with your supervisor. My supervisor was in Denmark, he was the head of the AAP
programme. That was a very interesting way of doing things. It was very cool for me because I got to interact with my
supervisor who is the sort of director of this programme, which means that he knows a lot! He is very involved in
various countries, so I learned a lot from that. On the other hand I didn’t have a day-to-day supervisor that I could
interact with and who could sort of guide me a little bit more from a local point of view. But then what happened was
that when I arrived in August, I think it was by the end of October or something like that, a local director was hired.
Then I had him as my supervisor. The change from one supervisor to the other wasn’t ideal and I’ve spoken to IBIS
about that. That also has something to do with how the terms of reference system is then. Whether you write them
very precisely or whether you leave them very open. There was also some responsibility on my part in relation to how
I understood these terms of reference. I think it will be relevant for you guys in the sense that “how do you manage an
intern” right? There were some difficulties there. It also came down to human issues; “how do you deal with staff”,
and I guess that my supervisor in Denmark, being the head of the programme and a very busy person, it was very
difficult for him to really know how well I had understood what he wanted me to do. Then this new guy comes, who
was hired in Ghana, then that made the transfer from one supervisor to another in a way so that everybody knows
what my responsibilities are, and everybody knows what they would want me to do and how I have understood what
they wanted me to do, very difficult. That was a difficult position to be in. But in the end it worked out really well. I’m
just talking here; please ask any questions you want! I think one of the great strengths of my stay was also this
independence that I had, which gave me a lot and which also enabled me to do some things for IBIS because I was
working very closely with one of the partners; I was able to go on a lot of excursions to the country side to see the
mine sites and to be at seminars with subsistence farmers and others from the communities affected by mining, and
really get to understand how IBIS’s partners work with the local people. This is something which a coordinator, even a
local one, wouldn’t really be able to do because it’s expensive to send them out on this kind of field research. Because
I didn’t have a supervisor in Ghana, I was granted additional days for this kind of travels. Now, my summary of this
would be that working with an NGO in this way, an intern can really contribute a lot, but the management process like
in any other organisation can get kind of out of hand. But it ended up OK.
I: You mentioned how the Terms of reference can be too specific or too loose. What was the case in your situation?
R: I think the terms of reference were really well written. The problem was that I have never really understood what I
was supposed to do. In part because I had never really had any previous work experience. So I mean, of course I read
them and everything and I thought I understood them. But I think my supervisor could perhaps have been a little
more critical about how well I had understood what I was supposed to do, you know?
I: So maybe the problem was communication?
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R: Yeah, definitely.
I: You mention the lack of a supervisor. That must have been a bit of an unusual situation for an intern to not have a
local supervisor. What were the implications of this if you compare yourself to other interns?
R: I think my situation was definitely very unusual in that there wasn’t any kind of coherent setup. Ghana is not so
bad, but Liberia, Sierra Leone and so on, some of these countries are quite tumultuous. Anything can happen, right?
Sometimes a staff member is let loose or a staff member leaves or you know, something happens. Then the intern is in
a new situation. But if you take a situation where an intern has one supervisor the whole time through, of course it
makes a big difference because then this supervisor will have thought through the job assignments that the intern is
supposed to do. Theoretically, IBIS only assign interns to specific tasks. Like they have one specific task that this intern
is supposed to provide. The ideal situation is that the supervisor has thought of the particular task and then you go in
and do it in the way they envisioned it, but in my situation that was kind of different because my tasks weren’t
thought through by a local supervisor, but by a lot of different people who had put some thoughts together. It also
made it very interesting.
I: Did you feel that it gave you more autonomy in relation to your tasks?
R: Definitely, and I think I overdid my autonomy. That’s why I’m saying I didn’t really get my terms of reference.
I: Let’s move on from your tasks down there. We also want to talk about what went prior to your internship, first of all;
did you have previous experience with being in Ghana, in Africa, or in a third world country in general?
R: Well, I had spent some time in Argentina, Peru, and Chile and I was working in an orphanage there for about a
month, but not really, you know? I hadn’t been to Africa before, but I wanted to do that. I haven’t had a lot of
experience with Africa but I have always travelled a lot.
I: The reason I ask is because we have seen an intern advert where they ask for this kind of experience from the interns,
so we’re curious to see what kind of experience the interns have. Was it through your travels in South America that you
learned about IBIS?
R: No, I have a friend whose mom has been working with IBIS, but I think I felt that writing the application, and the
fact that I’ve been living in Canada, Argentina, and that I speak Spanish, French, I’ve always been travelling a lot; that
kind of made a difference. I know that some of the other interns that went away with IBIS have been to Africa before,
but I have a lot of interest in Africa. I have done a course in Africa studies.[STATIC]. I hadn’t been to Africa before.
I: So did you have a relationship with IBIS?
R: I have been making donations with IBIS before, but I don’t think that played a big part.
I: When you were looking for an internship, did you go straight to IBIS’s adverts, or did you look elsewhere as well?
R: Because I had a friend’s mom who was working with IBIS and another friend who was really enthusiastic about IBIS,
I had been having a positive image of the organisation. I also, I don’t know how, knew that their interns tend to have a
real work experience whereas most other Danish NGOs have systems where you have to pay to go away with them. It
doesn’t really seem like you are aided in any way to contribute. You are just kind of getting an experience. I had a
positive idea of IBIS and so I had already signed up to their intern newsletter, two or three years ago. I still get
positions about internships that are available. I had a special interest in IBIS, but I also really wanted to go to subSaharan Africa, just anywhere. I was also applying to embassies and I was interested in working for a private company
as well, but I thought it was a bit difficult to find just like that, so then I applied for embassies and then IBIS.
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I: Let’s talk a bit more about preparation and what went before you went. We have read a lot about IBIS’s hiring
process. Can you walk us through what happened?
R: My whole meeting with IBIS is “bureaucracy”. No, that sounds wrong because now you will be like “ahh,
bureaucracy! That’s the word he used!”. I am just kind of joking because it is not that bad. There is not a lot of people
there. I think I was a special case, because when I first went there I went for one interview for a position in Sierra
Leone. I had written two applications. One for a position in Sierra Leone which was for an education programme, and
one other for the intern position in Accra. I was only called up for the position in Sierra Leone. I went there and had an
interview and it went fine, but when it was over the intern coordinator, she asked me [STATIC] “it’s strange that we
didn’t pick you there” [STATIC].
I: Can you repeat that, we lost you for a minute.
R: I was just saying that I was picked for Sierra Leone but not Ghana. When the interview was over the intern
coordinator said “didn’t you also apply for Ghana?”, and I said “well yeah” and then I told her that I thought it was
very strange that they had picked me for Sierra Leone and not for Ghana because Sierra Leone was about education
and local governance. [STATIC] Basically I told her that I thought I was more suited for the position in Ghana because
of my study programme. Then she said that she thought that was very strange, and then they called me up for this
Ghana position. It seems a bit strange that that’s the way it’s done. But anyway, then I was given this position in
Ghana instead of the one in Sierra Leone, and then I lost it because my supervisor in Ghana had left. Then, actually,
IBIS came back to me and said that they were really sorry about this and that they were going to try to see if they
could find another internship for me. Then I actually had an interview for a position in South Sudan.
I: Also with IBIS?
R: Yes, also with IBIS, and then they almost started a position for me there, but I pulled out because I thought that
South Sudan was a bit intense. Then after a while, [the supervisor] came back to me and presented this idea to me
about going to Ghana and having this kind of more loose job assignment that I described to you earlier on. One thing
that I thought was really cool was that IBIS in spite of me not really having a position, invited me to their intern
seminar, the one where they prepare everyone. As far as I remember there were like two or three days where IBIS
went through their organisation: Who to contact to do something with press, who to contact if you wanted to do
something else; different programmes. There was a doctor coming out and talking about what kind of vaccines you
should take. I thought it was OK, I mean the preparation phase is kind of special because IBIS really treat us as
independent people and it’s kind of assumed that we’ll be able to deal with the situations that we’re placed in
whatever they are; finding a place to stay, getting your vaccines done, getting an aeroplane ticket, you know; getting
along socially, whatever. I already spoke to them about this and I think that some of the things are OK. Of course I can
find my own airplane ticket and buy my own vaccines but sometimes it can be very difficult to find accommodation in
some of these places. I know that IBIS has some bad experiences with it sometimes.
I: What kind of bad experience?
R: One classic case is when someone working for IBIS has to get a place to stay for someone from this or that person.
Then when they get that place to stay they don’t like it. Then they leave it and then the friend who has already done a
favour by getting that place for the person, now doesn’t have anyone renting the place and he loses money. Then this
employee from IBIS has actually misused a personal friend’s favour. There are a lot of contingencies like that which
takes IBIS away from doing other things. I guess it always works out in the end but coming from a business school, I
think it would have been more efficient if you had tried to make it go a bit more smoothly, also because the IBIS
employee would then probably be quicker at adapting to the local working environment. I think that IBIS is aware of
the issue and I know that a couple of the other interns have also been discussing this with them. I think it is an
19
interesting thing. The funny thing about it is also that IBIS Danish staff which is placed in a country in Latin America or
Africa; they get certain benefits or a certain treatment that is advantageous, that the interns don’t get. In some ways
the interns have to make it on their own more than the senior staff. It is an interesting thing. How to balance that?
IBIS does not want to spend too much money on the interns. The interns are supposed to contribute to IBIS’s mission
and objectives and not just be a lot of practical issues for the local staff to deal with.
I: You talk about how it was getting to know the organisation. What were the challenges that came from this and all
the independency? Did you feel well prepared for the non-work related things?
R: I don’t know, I think it’s a personal thing also. Some people stress out about these things, and some people don’t.
For me, I got a little bit worried that I was going to be in Accra and not knowing where to stay. But really it wasn’t an
issue; I had a place to stay. I had spoken to the previous intern. That’s what a lot of people do; the previous intern in
your position, we talk to them about where to stay, how to get by and so on. It is also difficult for IBIS because you
also have to be there to know the situation. My main worry was definitely which kind of malaria medication I had to
take and where I had to stay: Those were the two things I worried about.
I: You mentioned that you had help with that at the preparation seminar?
R: Yeah, we had a lot of help with that, but those were the two things I was most concerned about.
I: You mention that you had help from the previous intern. How did you get in touch with that person and what was the
extend of your communication both prior to and during your internship?
R: It was mainly prior [to the internship], and I would say that this whole thing about where to stay and all that, I don’t
think it’s a very big issue. The only thing is that I felt that IBIS could do very little to help us a lot, you know? It wasn’t a
huge issue; it’s just that I think it would be very easy to make it a lot easier. I was in touch with the previous intern and
she helped me find a place to stay and gave me some good advice about things to do and things to see. I think that
among the interns there’s a lot of “want to help each other out”. I’m sure that the next intern in Ghana; I will also help
him or her out as much as they want me to.
I: Would you say that there is a network of interns, or is it more ad hoc?
R: It’s more sort of an ad hoc network. In Ghana in the year before I was there there were four interns and the year
before that, I don’t know exactly, but I know about the past three interns that have been in Accra and I know who
have been outside Accra in Ghana the year before me. I know their stories; what they ended up doing and everything.
I think we tend to know about each other like that. I don’t think you usually know a lot about who comes after you,
but you know about the ones who have been there before you and you know that you can contact them.
I: And was that something you utilised when you were in Ghana?
R: As soon as I was there it was a lot easier and more fun to just find things out locally but before, definitely. One of
them I spoke with on the phone. She was living in Aalborg. [STATIC] They’re all very helpful.
I: There are two things I want to ask. If we go back a bit, you mentioned the interview about Sierra Leone. As I hear it,
that was sort of your proper interview, and then the others were offered to you. How did the actual interview take
place?
R: I had two ‘proper’ interviews. The only thing was that I was called up late for the second one. The one in Sudan was
also almost a proper interview. Basically it was, only that I hadn’t handed them an application. At all three interviews
there was one person who was working locally. Every time it was someone from Copenhagen, but someone who was
20
working with the country in focus. And then there was the intern coordinator. Those were the two every time. The
intern coordinator was always there with someone who was working locally.
I: Another thing we were told, is that interns are supposed to, within the first day or two of arriving, have a meeting
with the local supervisor or intern coordinator about the situation in the country; practicalities as well as IBIS related
issues. Did you also have a meeting like that?
R: Yes I had a really nice intro to the programme where I met with all of the staff in Accra. My supervisor was in
Denmark, so he wasn’t there of course. There was some local staff and some Danish staff that were very helpful in
telling me all about what to do and what to be prepared for. Also my assignment and all that.
I: Let’s talk a little bit about what you did outside of IBIS when you were in Ghana in terms of social interactions. Who
were the people you would spend time with?
R: Well, I spent a lot of time with the interns from the Danish embassy. There were four of them. Then I spent a lot of
time with people that I was living with. They were all German speaking women. We lived at a ‘compound’ we called it.
It was those eight girls and me. They were working for a German organisation. [STATIC] I spent a lot of time with them
and Danes from the embassy. Basically it was eight people at the compound and four Danes from the embassy and
then people that we would hang out with. There was some staff at the local NGO that I was working closely with. I
would hang out with them on weekdays and I did a language course in a local language. I played football and went
dancing and just tried to look for activities to meet new people. I guess I should tell you about the fact that I went to a
local community that I was working with, with IBIS. They asked me if I could help them out to get some funding to
build a school. I was very hesitant in the beginning because it sounded like a lot of work. But in the end I ended up
going there and they had some people from IBIS who told me where to apply. We applied for 100.000 dollars at the
Japanese embassy and the application is still pending. That also meant that I had spent four days of my spare time in
this farming community, trying to learn about their situation and why they needed a school so we could write a good
application. That was really, really interesting. It was kind of a social thing, right? Getting to know these people. It was
a very different social experience to be hanging out with the local council of elders of this town. I spent a lot of time
there and that was really an interesting social experiment. In the end they actually made me chief of development in
this town. There was a big ceremony and everything. That was really cool! Just to tell you something about the stories.
I: Perhaps my project partner has a few follow-up questions?
S: Yes, I would like to ask you; how much time did you have preparing your departure from the time you found out you
were going to Ghana until you left?
R: Well, the first time I found out I was going to Ghana, I think was in April. The second time might have been in June.
Then I would have had about two or three months, or two and a half month, something like that. Maybe it was even
later, I don’t really remember. I remember it as being not a lot of time but still enough so I could get tickets at a
decent price.
S: Have you been contacted by one of the current interns?
R: They are not going to have a position right now, so I haven’t been in touch with them about that. I think the next
one might be next January.
I: Do you have anything you want to add to the discussion we have been having?
R: Well, I don’t know. Not really. It has been really interesting to be there and I can always talk a lot about being an
intern there but I think I have basically filled you in on most of the stuff you are after.
21
I: I actually have one question now that I think of it. Previous people we have spoken to have mentioned isolation and
that they were isolated when they were in their country. Did you feel like that as well?
R: Well, no because Accra is a huge city and I was living with 8 other people and there were these Danish interns so
isolation was the furthest from what I was feeling. I know that some other people had been living in like places like
Fish Town in Liberia and that is just in the middle of nowhere so that would be tough, but Accra is a huge city so you
wouldn’t experience it there at all.
I: This isolation isn’t just in relation to social interactions outside work, but also in relation to contact with IBIS. Maybe
your case is a special case because your supervisor in the first part of your internship was in Denmark, so you would
obviously have had some contact with Denmark on a regular basis. But what was your sense of commitment from
head office during your internship?
R: Towards my internship?
I: Towards your work, yes.
R: I think that the head office is very busy doing a lot of other things. I think they are very committed to the interns but
I think that there is also an organisational culture within IBIS that the local offices should be allowed to do their work.
So head office doesn’t want to interfere locally, unless they are really sure about what to do. Kind of like a football
referee who doesn’t want to make a call until he’s sure that a foul was committed, but then he will do it. I think my
internship in particular, my supervisor was of course interested in it, but it was also one of those things where he had
other things to see to as well of course. I think that if he hadn’t been my supervisor, my contact to IBIS in Denmark
would have been limited to “in case of emergency”-situations. I think that’s OK. I think that a part of the reason why
the local offices don’t help interns with accommodation and so on, is that head office want.. “Why does IBIS have
interns?” – I think that there’s an attempt to say that it’s only going to be when the local offices would like to have an
intern. It should never be imposed by the head office. Still the head office is happy when the local offices decide to
take an intern because we help promote the name of IBIS in Denmark. They also help educate us in a way that they
believe is a good way. Now I have learned from IBIS, what it is like to be a good person, you know? I’m just kind of
joking. But I think it’s cool. I think it’s a good idea and I believe in that. I think it’s a very good idea that they send out
interns. Just to look at it from this kind of organisational view, then the interns can either be a huge benefit and
contribution to the local country or they can be kind of a burden.
Appendix 10: Interview 3
Country:
Mozambique
Duration of interview:
39 minutes
I: Let’s get started with some basic info. If you just want to start with stating your age and what country you went to.
R: I’m 25 and I went to Mozambique for five months last year with IBIS.
I: Were you in Maputo?
R: Yes, I was in Maputo. I went out on one field trip with IBIS for a few days and I travelled a little bit on my own, but
mostly I stayed in Maputo in the office.
I: And what did you do at the office?
R: I was in the communication and fund raising part and I was mainly doing communication. I did a really small amount
of fundraising in my daily work. I was basically doing webpage work, I was upgrading the English part of the webpage,
[STATIC], I was composing newsletters, I was doing translations between Portuguese and English and I was writing
22
articles. [STATIC]. Some of the tasks I didn’t manage to do. I was supposed to take photos of the projects and at the
time IBIS didn’t really have a camera I could use or any software to edit, so I tried to do some stuff with my phone and
freeware, but it didn’t turn out particularly well.
I: It sounds like you were lacking basic equipment to perform your tasks?
R: Yes, for at least one of the tasks that I was supposed to do, which I didn’t really manage. But also, it was a new thing
for IBIS Mozambique to start working with and there were some demands from head office. They were just trying to
figure out how to do it. What I did was investigate which kind of software to buy and make some guidelines for when
you are making interviews with children. I tried to write some stuff on how to take photographs of very, very dark
skinned people in very bright sunshine, because sometimes it looks like a black dot. But most of my tasks were in
written communication, making articles for Denmark and for Mozambique.
I: What was the course you were doing at university?
R: I used to be in Brazilian Studies which is why I chose Mozambique because I have a background in Portuguese, and I
was then able to do some of this linguistic stuff. Then I had Anthropology and now I am in African studies. Now I am
doing a master’s in African studies. [STATIC]
I: This leads us to our next question; what was your background for choosing to come to Mozambique? You mentioned
the Portuguese language interest, but what else came into consideration?
R: I have actually lived in Brazil before, it was the more Africa-influenced part of Brazil, and when I came back I had a
really big interest in going to find out “what is Africa?”. That’s why I choose African studies. I already knew that I
wanted to go to Mozambique because I had the linguistic advantage and also because I read that there were some
cultural references or similarities with Brazil. I was thinking of either Mozambique or Angola. IBIS also had a position in
Angola but it was only for three months whereas the one in Mozambique was for five months. My goal was to stay out
of Denmark for as long as I could. I also felt that Mozambique was a more peaceful place and I had a curiosity towards
the country. But definitely the language [was important]. It was a big thing for me to even look at southern Africa.
I: How come you chose to go with IBIS? Did you have experience with IBIS?
R: I did. I already knew that I wanted to go with them since a long time if I got the chance. I like their ideological
background and I haven’t really been volunteering but I have gone to some volunteer meetings and some
introductions. I really liked the way it was organised. I found it to be very democratic and with a lot of space to be
creative and to take a lot of responsibility. I felt like it was much more democratic than for example volunteering with
the Red Cross or something like that. I got a feeling that people in IBIS are really down to earth and are more humble.
There are a lot of people who are really arrogant. They want to help other people but they are really arrogant in the
country where they go. I felt that IBIS are more humble and, let’s say, receptive to what people actually want. I like
that and I was attracted to that.
I: What about after you went [to Mozambique], did you still have that impression?
R: Actually I do. I do. In general, I was disillusioned as everyone who goes to Africa is, with the international aid
community, because you meet so many assholes to say it straightforward. It is really difficult to come to grasp with
the fact that they are there and they are trying to help but they are gaining loads of money and they’re completely
isolated from all the local population, maybe they don’t speak the language, or if they do; they definitely don’t
understand the humour. I felt like people in IBIS were open and was integrating. There was at least one who had a
Mozambican boyfriend or husband, a serious relationship and being open to the local culture. Actually liking the
country where you are. I think that is so essential if you want to do any work there. If you don’t like the people and
23
the way they live, then how do you expect to help? I had a really good impression of the Danish people who worked
with IBIS in Mozambique.
I: This humbleness or being down to earth that you mention, do you have examples of occasions where you
experienced that?
R: It’s more in the daily attitude. For example, we would have morning meeting every morning really short where
everyone would stand in a circle and saying what they were going to do during the day. If you wanted a meeting with
someone you could ask. Usually there are some comments about current events, for example on the political front. Of
course you have to follow it if you’re working in that context. It is more a matter of how you relate to the country
you’re in, to the government, to the people: It was more about the attitude. But I could really feel that the director of
the office, who was a Danish woman, she was really very respectful, and was always saying that “we are here to make
Mozambique better, we are not here for our sake”. You could just feel that this is the basic attitude and this is how
you treat the topics that arise on a daily basis.
I: There is one more thing that I want to ask you about your tasks and daily life. You mentioned that when you had to
do the communication work, you had to use your own camera and work with these new initiatives that were starting
but weren’t sort of implemented yet. The reason I want to ask about this is that we also spoke to the intern that came
after you and she basically said the same thing (Interviewee: Huh!), that she had to do some movie editing, and she felt
that she had to build a lot of it from scratch. As she said she was facing the same thing as you: It was a new thing from
management in Denmark, but there wasn’t any template on how to do it. It strikes me that you would have
experienced the same thing right after each other. What was the communication you had with head office in regards
to this particular task?
R: I was told that after I went, the new intern would at least have a camera so they would have the hardware and that
they would also buy the software needed. I don’t know if they did that. My communication with head office was more
or less through my supervisor. She set these guidelines which were this sort of dictatorial top down thing, “we need
this, please make it for us”. I could also see the plans that they had for a new layout. [STATIC]. In this layout I could see
that they had a video spot, and I could see that the initial thing that they wanted to do was to make a video diary or
‘vox pop’ every month from a different project. They didn’t manage so they put in some Danish videos and some
other stuff, so they managed to put in some videos. [STATIC]. It didn’t work in theory because they didn’t allocate any
resources to do it on the ground. The communication and fundraising coordinator; she doesn’t have any time to start
playing with video, so it’s basically an intern job. If you don’t have an intern that has any communication background
or has made videos before, then you’re trying to invent stuff. In a way its fine, because at the same time there’s not a
lot of expectation that you do it professionally. [STATIC]
I: You said that is was very much an intern kind of project. Do you think that was the case in all of the different
projects?
R: I know that at least in the Bolivia office, it was also an intern doing it. He was studying communication so he was
very skilled. They had some software and a real camera. They got it, probably because somebody took the initiative.
It’s the regional office that has to buy the hardware and software. That’s what I know, because I was talking to this guy
in Bolivia about how to do it and what programs he had and stuff. I don’t know about the other regional offices.
I: That more or less concludes what I wanted to ask about your tasks in the country. Another thing we really want to
talk about is what happens when you had to prepare to go. I know about the particular hiring process; that they have
certain policies when it comes to the interviews and so on. Can you walk us through how you got the internship?
R: How I got the internship? OK, I’ll see if I can remember. I saw the post on the webpage and then I had to write an
application in English and Portuguese and send my resume. Then they called me and said that I got it, more or less.
24
[STATIC]
R: I had an interview. There were two girls there, and my later supervisor was on Skype, so I also got to meet her at
the interview.
I: Did you go to the introductory seminar, and if you did can you tell us about it?
R: I did. We had a lot of different information about how it is on a personal level when you go out, some things about
health, some things about IBIS as an organisation and some things about how it is being an intern. There were some
presentations from some previous interns who are now with IBIS. That was really good. It gave us an idea about what
was going to be the difficulties and it was good to be prepared for it.
I: Did you have a chance to talk with the previous interns?
R: Yes, they did some presentations. Afterwards you could talk to them casually. I also had the contact for the intern
who was still in Mozambique when I was still preparing to go. I was also emailing with her, and I asked her all my
questions as I also did with the next one.
I: How did you get her contact information, and when did you get that information?
R: After I was accepted as the next intern, my supervisor in Maputo sent me the contact for the current intern and
asked me to direct more of my everyday small questions to her because she was less busy. Also, I had the contact to
my supervisor, so I could ask anything.
I: You mentioned that, at the seminar, there was some information on a personal level and on an organisational level.
What kind of information did you get on the personal level?
R: On the personal level? That was also included in the earlier intern’s presentations. It was about how, as an intern,
to work the hierarchy of the work space and also be prepared for the fact that the hierarchical organisation is much
more rigid if you’re in an African context for example, because people care more about age or where you are. It’s
quite common that people ignore your emails, which is really frustrating because you don’t know how to do. If you ask
people something and they say “yeah yeah”, and they don’t give it to you, and you ask the person the third time and
they still ignore you. Then you get a bit embarrassed and you are like; “hmm.. can I ask again?”. So these are the kind
of things to be prepared for. It’s going to be a bit difficult to navigate because you are in the bottom. It was really good
to know. Then there was another presentation where they were talking more about; just to be yourself and contribute
with what you have and not to try to be something you’re not.
I: How did you feel equipped to deal with the challenges that arose after having this seminar?
R: I think it’s always different when you go on the ground and there were definitely some things I wasn’t prepared for.
Actually the things that I later felt were difficult; they also talked about it [at the seminar]. Also about how it’s actually
quite a big workload when you come and start directly in a new internship and you have to adjust to a new country.
Maybe you are used to being a student; you are not used to having to be in an office eight hours per day and you get
quite exhausted. They actually mentioned that but I think I forgot it along the way. To be able to recall, and say “OK it
is a normal process, it’s not just me being lazy” or whatever. It’s normal that it’s a bit hard.
I: So the challenge was not just the work but also the work environment, is that how I should interpret it?
R: Definitely. I think that it is a mix of everything because you go into a completely different setting. There are a lot of
things that are more difficult when you are in Africa. There are security things, you are far away from your network,
your family, you have to find friends. At the same time you are thrown head on into a full time job. I think that in the
25
beginning of a new job you are always more tired because you have to learn a lot of new stuff, so it is really difficult
during this time. For me it was two or three months that were really hard because I wanted to get a social life, I
wanted to make friends, but actually I didn’t have any energy: I worked during the week and in the weekend I just
wanted to sleep. I didn’t even go out dancing. Then afterwards it started being a bit easier because of your job. Also if
you come from Denmark in February to a climate that is 35 to 40 and humid then you get really physically exhausted.
There is a lot of adaptation in the beginning that was really hard. Then afterwards you feel more at home and you
learn how to do your stuff. You don’t spend so much time and energy adjusting. [STATIC]
I: Another thing we want to look into is the social interactions you had when you were down there. You mentioned that
it was tough having to find friends and to have a social life when you had to do all this work. How did it all play out
when you were there?
R: I have this stupid idea when I go to a new country that I don’t want to speak with Danish people because I just left
them; I want to know the place where I am and I want to know the people that are from the place where I am. In the
first week I got two Mozambican friends who are really sweet. They are still my friends. I was hanging out with them
the most. I knew that there were some Danish interns at the embassy and I knew that I could get some contacts but I
didn’t really seek it out so much. Then after a while, what happened to me was that I had a panic attack somewhere
down the road. By this time I had already met some of the other Danes but I wasn’t hanging out with them so much
because they had a bit of a ‘Scandinavian club’ and they were speaking English. I wasn’t there to do that. I was there
to get to know Mozambicans and speak Portuguese. After I had this panic attack I felt that I really needed to take this
seriously, that I was too stressed. Then I started hanging out with the Danes a bit more because they can better
understand your situation: How it is when you are far away and there are a lot of things that are really difficult. You
are the white person in the street every time and there are a lot of things that are stressful and frustrating. I started
hanging out with the Danes more, but still keeping contact with my Mozambican friends. I also made more expat
friends from different European communities. There are a lot of young people in Maputo so it was really easy and
there. Sometimes it’s a bit too much of a ‘Europe club’. At least to me the Scandinavian club was a bit too closed so I
found some groups of friends that were more mixed with more different people; some Italians, some Mozambicans.
I: You mention this international group that you ended up hanging out with. Where did you live; on your own or with
other expats or Mozambicans?
R: I took over the previous intern’s room. She was living with a Brazilian lady who has lived in Mozambique for many
years and who is working there. There was another girl there who was renting a room. She was from Germany. She
left at one point and then there came an American girl.
I: What was it like living with those people?
R: It was nice [living] with the two girls, but I didn’t have a good relationship with my landlady. That was another stress
factor for me. It was quite expensive also, and it was difficult finding some [accommodation].
I: About these social interactions. You mentioned the people you were hanging out with. [STATIC]
R: Yes, I was saying: In the beginning it was really nice that there were somebody I could [STATIC].
I: What about the social interactions with your co-workers? Now we’re back in an IBIS context. What was the level of
communication with Denmark?
R: The communication with head office went through my supervisor mostly. In the office I talked to all the colleagues
and had a nice relationship with almost all of them except one or two, who made [STATIC] jokes to me, which made
me really angry. I was going out with one of the girls who worked there a few times. She was the only one who was in
26
my age group. All the others had families. We went to some concerts, which was nice. Generally, people were nice
and making jokes with you. I also worked together with some of them for some of the things where I had to write
things about something in their project: Then I would sit down with them and ask them about information or ask them
to write me something or this kind of thing. Apart from that it was difficult to get certain people to answer my emails
and give me the material I needed. Otherwise it was nice and easy communication. People were very sweet and very
friendly.
I: Let’s move into being an intern with IBIS. One thing we like to ask is: why does IBIS have interns? How does IBIS use
interns?
R: IBIS is pretty responsible in terms of ensuring that you learn something. I don’t feel like they use their interns in just
productive way; that they want to get something from you. I felt like my supervisor was very dedicated to teaching me
something and making sure I got something out of my internship, and that was a really good feeling. That apart, of
course they use you for a lot of the tasks that would otherwise not be done, because it’s a bit of a luxurious thing
making more articles, producing this kind of [STATIC] material, updating the website which would otherwise not be in
English for example. Generally stuff they don’t have time to do, and if you don’t do it it’s just not going to be done.
You also feel like you’re making a difference. They are also using your work. They are able to make you produce
something that they can actually use concretely. That’s a good feeling too.
I: It sounds like you really benefitted from your internship. I’m not sure I have so many more questions, but maybe my
partner has some follow-up questions.
S: No
I: There is one thing from a previous interview we did: One person said that IBIS really treat the interns as independent
persons, in the sense that you really have to work out a lot of stuff on your own. What is your take on this?
R: Yes, they also said that to me before I went. I think it depends on your internship. In Maputo you have a lot of tasks
that are ready for you when you go. All the communication things are very straight forward. You are encouraged to
bring your own ideas to produce some things and to make suggestions about work for yourself. I think some of the
people who are out in the project are more independent. I didn’t feel it so much, but actually, when I came there was
already a list of work tasks for me and then we were building it along the way. There was always something to do. I
had some creative projects for which I could try and figure out the solution for when I had time. The fact is I never had
a lot of time because there was always something to do. Yes, in a way there were some things; I made some donorreports and stuff that are more or less figured out, but I felt like there was space to be creative or to figure how to
make solutions on your own. In general I think that in Maputo this is probably less pronounced because you have a lot
of already set work tasks that are very concrete; do some translation, upload a webpage, making a newsletter for next
month. Making a newsletter is also a quite independent task. Still you have certain requirements you need to follow
and the requirements from head office is pretty strict about articles and stuff. I think in my case, probably less
[independence] than the stories I have heard from people.
S: You said that they had a list of the tasks. Were you aware of these tasks before leaving?
R: I received the list when I got there. What I was told about the work was just that it was an office job and that I
should be prepared to be in the office a lot, which I also was. Most of the days just sitting in front of the computer.
Maybe it’s not what you think you’ll do when you think “ohh! I’m going to Africa!”. They also told me that before I
went and then my supervisor also went over the list.
I: So you had supervision all along?
27
R: Yes, I was working with my supervisor at the other end of the desk. The offices are quite small so you’re close to
everybody.
I: A final question then: After having done your internship and you came back to Denmark; what has been the level of
contact with IBIS?
R: There hasn’t been a lot, but the fact is that I didn’t really come back when I came back. I went to Spain, and I just
came back in February. They actually called me when I was in Spain to ask if I wanted to do a presentation in a school,
and I said that I would love to but I couldn’t since I was in Spain. I also met with the intern who followed me, and was
writing with her before she went and a little bit after, but that’s more or less it.
I: This school presentation. Was it in Denmark?
R: Yes.
I: Is it common that they like you to participate in these things in Denmark afterwards?
R: I don’t know. I think it’s not uncommon but I don’t know. They called me so I don’t know a lot about it.
I: How did you get in touch with the next intern?
R: She also got it from my supervisor.
I: I think we have more or less discussed the things we wanted to talk about. Thank you very much.
Appendix 11: Interview 4
Country:
Bolivia
Duration of interview:
31:22
I: If you can give us some basic information,just for the record.Your name,age, what country you went to. Just the basic
stuff.
R: I’m 29 years old now, and I went to La Paz, Bolivia; for half of year. Yes, I was there like a communication intern. I
study at Roskilde University; Communication and International Development.
I: OK. And how far are you in your studies now? What semester are you?
R: I suppose to start my master thesis after this summer, in like September, something like that.
I: So your internship was fairly earlier in your degree?
R: I do not know. I took my internship in the second semester after my bachelor more or less. Like 4 years in the
studies.
I: About your internship. We want to know what you did at the office. What were your tasks at the office? Can you tell
us a little bit about what you did there?
R: Yes, of course. As I told you I was a communication intern, so I was like an assistant to the only Danish person there,
and she is there because they also need someone who speaks Danish to produce the news to Denmark. I was there as
a help for her. My assignment were like pretty wide different things; mostly because there were these changes
happening just at the same time I was there they were closing the offices in Peru, Guatemala and some other places.
So Bolivia it is the only place in South America they have still. Because of this they had to change all the posters, all the
names like new flyers, new information, pamphlets. I had a lot of things to do with that, because they needed
28
everything updated new info and I started a new Facebook page for IBIS Bolivia and I made a lot of videos there. I was
the first intern there that had some experience in doing videos and filming and I began this project. I think they
continued it, but I am not sure. For every partner they have there in Bolivia, I wanted to go out with the colleagues
when they went to monitor and evaluate the projects, to make interviews and produce little presentations, videos of
the projects they do together with their partners. I helped some other IBIS volunteers who went there to visit for 2
weeks and I had to travel with them, be their guide and translator. And there was a documentary team from Denmark
going down to make a documentary and I had to help them as well, travelling around with them. But, anyway, it was
changing every day, I went to the office and once a week we made an agreement on what are the things I should do
this week or the following 2 weeks, maybe; and, so I had this plan on what to do, but every day there was something
else I had to do, like: maybe I had to translate this article for the boss there who wanted to understand what they
were saying in Danish, and just like little, little jobs all the time, but very, very different kind of things to do.
I: We have been talking with a few other interns who were interns with IBIS in the same time and I understand that you
have to sign this term of reference at the beginning of your internship with the vary tasks that you had. How did that
corresponded with your initial contract of terms of reference? How strict was that in comparison with what you
actually did?
R: Well it was ...the funny thing is that you have to make the terms of reference, like cooperation with the boss there.
I made it with her, talking, what were her needs, what I would like to do myself, what experience I would like to get.
So, we made these terms of reference very wide including loads of things. I think that I was in most of the things,
maybe like 80% of the things I got to do a little bit; actually we quite followed it, also because I had a lot to say in the
making of the terms of reference. Another thing I did there a lot: I wrote a lot of articles, as well for the Danish.
I: Just let me get this straight: the terms of reference, you said you made it with your supervisor. Was that on the
location, on Bolivia or did you write it before you went?
R: I went there first, I saw the notices on the internet, I wrote my application there and I talked with...
I: The internship coordinator.
R: Yes, exactly. I talked with her and then I got another job interview with my supervisor through Skype.
I: Was that a separate job interviewyou had with your supervisor?
R: Yes exactly. I had, more or less, like 2 interviews: a preliminary one with the coordinator and another one with my
supervisor. And with her afterwards there was an exchange of emails and we agreed on the terms of reference like
that.
I: OK. Let’s move a bit further, because I know that in the job adverts that IBIS do, they often ask for previous
experience. What was your previous experience with Bolivia or South America?
R: I have a girlfriend from Colombia and I have been travelling there for like 9 months before and later on I lived in
Colombia for a year, studied there as an exchange student for half of year and stayed there working for half of year
more and so my Spanish was quite good before I went there already, yes.
I: OK. Let’s talk a bit about your preparation, other than just your experience. There is another thing we really want to
look at: how does an organisation like IBIS prepare the interns when they have to go to a third world country,
regardless of their previous experience. If you could tell us a little bit about what sort of preparation you went through.
R: I remember that we had like this week-end with 2 days [disruption- he answered a phone call]. So we had this
training week-end with all the other interns who were going around the world and I really don’t remember how it
29
was, it was like a lot of different employees at IBIS talking about practical stuff: like what we had to prepare, what
vaccines we should get, how it is to live there, also former interns were there to talk about their experiences. For me it
was quite different, because it was very much focused on Africa, because all the others interns were going to Africa,
so for me 50% of it was useless, but still interesting though. Of course they had to focus on Africa when everybody
else went there, but that’s the way it was.
I: OK. You mentioned there was a little bit of emphasis on some practical things: how it was going abroad and a little
bit on the internal things. What was the emphasis on in total? I do not need details, because obvious it was a long time
ago.
R: I think, for me what I remember best are the practicalities. When we went there were like 10 interns at the same
time and they all had like very different roles to fill out in the job they were going to have, right. There was one more
or maybe 2 more communication interns, but many were going there to evaluate or to help with the monitoring and
things like that. So I remember that I had one specific talk with the communication staff and with the other 2 interns,
getting prepared on how their policies are and what kind of magazines or how they talk with the members of IBIS and
things like that. And they gave me all these documentary rules, and how you have to write, this, this and that. And
that was about the work I had to do really.
I: How did you implement that when you went to Bolivia? Was it like they said?
R: Yes, yes it was, more or less. I was told before that there was going to be some problems; I had to be very sure who
my boss was. My boss was my supervisor in Bolivia, because they told me that they were using a lot, or at least in
Bolivia the communication interns have a lot to do with the main office in Denmark, so I have been told that your boss
is always your supervisor.“You have to ask her and if we ask you to do something from Denmark you always have to
ask your supervisor first”, because that is the hierarchy the way it has to go, because otherwise you will have a lot to
do and not have the time to do it and things like that. It was more or less the way they said it was.
I: Would they often contact you directly or did you speak through your supervisor?
R: Most of the time through my supervisor. But as well, for example I went with this campaign “Hele verden I skole” –
because I had to do some videos for them as well, for their home page. When I was there I was lucky – they had the
focus on Bolivia that year for the book they make. So I had a lot of things to do for the Danish main office, because
they had this focus on Bolivia that year. So I ended up talking a lot with the ones from this campaign, but my
supervisor was in all the time, like CC in the emails and things like that.
I: It sounds like you had a lot of responsibilities in terms of all these different tasks. How would you say your level of
autonomy was in relation to the work?
R: It was quite high, I think. Really if I didn’t know what to do I was allowed to come with suggestions. As I told you the
video thing hadn’t be done before, it wasn’t started on, so I could ask the colleagues there, like where are you going
this month. The first 2 months I didn’t go to the meetings from the beginning of the month. After 2 months I finally
came there and when I did this it helped me a lot, because then I knew where everybody was going, because
otherwise I would just sit in my corner like an intern and never know what was going on, really. But when I started
going on to these meetings I knew: he is going there and then I asked him:”Could I maybe come with you and make a
video of this project?” – ”Yes, of course.’’
I: Did you asked to take part in these meetings? How did this start, with you going to the meetings?
R: I think it was my supervisor, who told me that”Oh, by the way they are having these meetings once a month”. She
didn’t always go there, because she didn’t have the time, she was really, really occupied, she had a lot of things to do.
30
But when I heard about it, and they told me I was allowed to go there, I did and it helped me a lot. The problem there
was internal communication, for me at least because I didn’t know what everybody else was doing. Also because for
the first couple of months I had my space on another floor, so I was like kind of outside. [With] all the movement, I
didn’t know what was happening; only my own duties.This changed when I began to come to these meetings.
I: Let’s move on to something else. A lot of the other interns talked about how they had, at least initially, some contact
with the previous interns about practicalities, about moving to the country. How was your experience in that area?
R: Well, when I came there they didn’t had an intern for an year, but I met the girl who was there with one year before
me and that was not really useful, because she had been very sick all the time there and she has been at the hospital 2
months out of the 3 months she has been there so she helped me, but not with a lot of things really.
I: OK. Well. Let me ask you something else. How did you find stuff like accommodation? You obvious been in the area,
but how did you get settled?
R: Well, I came there and I talked to my supervisor before and they had someone to pick me up at the airport and stay
at her place, at my supervisor’s place for the first 3 days, because she wasn’t there when I came, the first week. She
was out travelling. So I lived in her place and then I met one of her friends who was lending out a room so I ended up
moving with one of my supervisor’s friends and staying there for the rest of the period. So, that was quite easy for me.
I: OK. Let me double check my list to see... Personal preparations. Because we talked a little bit on what IBIS did with
this seminar, and how the hiring process was. What about your personal preparations? Obviously you had quite a lot
of experience in the country, but how did you prepared yourself for this internship?
R: Yes, I had a lot of preparations to do back here in Denmark, because my girlfriend, being Colombian, had to stay
here by herself for this half of year so I had to find someone else to live with her in this apartment. Do a lot of this
practical stuff, like how to pay the bills and stuff like that. So I was really occupied on the home front before. So I
didn’t think a lot of things about what I was going to do down there. I made this letter when I left, like 3 pages with all
the practicalities for the following intern, like the names of all the employees, where they study, how to go there from
the centre, how much to pay for a cab, how much for a bus, and all these practicalities, because I didn’t really know
that before I went there. I thought that this would be a nice thing for somebody else.
I: Was that on your own accord or was that requested by IBIS?
R: It was like a request to make this country report and I did that. I just used the 3 pages I made before hand to give
IBIS, so there was something they asked for this country report, but I did because the following, the next intern wrote
to me, asking some questions and I could just write some pages about how it is. So, I did that and started and kept
going about my favourite restaurant and things like that.
I: OK. Let’s see. I just want to ask you: what were the main challenges you had while you were in Bolivia? I mean, not
necessarily professional. What did you encounter as troublesome?
R: Let’s see: maybe one thing I missed a lot there: the lack of western culture, there is a lot of culture in Bolivia, but it’s
all indigenous culture, so all the parties are this way, the dinner, the food is always like this and that. I missed that a
lot. But like... I really enjoyed the culture there as well, and how revolutionary they always are: like going blocking the
road and you learn to be more relaxed when you been there for a while because you can make so many agreements
and appointments, but something is always going to go wrong and then you have to find this plan B. I think I learnt a
lot there. But I missed this world, how it is in Denmark, but when you make an agreement that is the agreement. But
in Bolivia you never really knew how it was going to be.
I: Ad-hoc, maybe?
31
R: Yes! Pretty much ad-hoc.
I: Another question we would like to ask is: from your experience how would you answer the question why does IBIS
have interns?
R: I think they have interns for different reasons. But originally it’s something educating the Danish public, in some
way; because they decided not to use, avoiding Danish employees in the rest of the world from many reasons.
Because they would like to use the local work force, if it’s qualified and of course it’s cheaper to have the local work
force, but it’s also better for the village. A consequence of this is that there are few Danish people go out and
experience how it is to live in a developing country and all the practicalities of living and working. So I think intern is a
way of letting people in these organisations and have experiences that might be useful also for working in the NGOs in
Denmark later on. As they really don’t send out people any more. Yes I think it is a good help to have. I don’t know.
I: You mentioned this sort of it’s a good way to get to know the NGOs in Denmark. Have you been approached by IBIS
to do, not necessarily work, but to participate in their activities after you came back?
R: Yes, I have been to this Latino Group for like the volunteers that are interested in Latin America mostly and I’m a
part of that: I go see a movie once a month and have meetings and things about Latin America. What else? I have
applied for a student job when I came home, but I didn’t get it. What else? I did something for this guy who works
there, just graphic things, a logo I worked a little bit. Because my supervisor posted on Facebook that someone was
looking for someone with ability in graphics and so I wrote him, and I helped him. It was like a job, they paid me like 5
hours, but nothing regularly.
I: The reason we ask is really just because we are interested in seeing how these organisations, I mean NGOs, use
volunteers. Do they stop after the internship ends? What is the level of connections afterwards? That sort of things:
some of the dynamics we would like to look into.
R: Aha. I think that it depends a lot on the interns. If I didn’t do anything to maintain contact with IBIS I don’t think
really that they would have done so much to keep me in the flow, because I have done something to stay in contact,
because I want to stay in the network, but in the same time I don’t know if they really have any guideline on how to
maintain the interns after the end of the internship. I wasn’t a volunteer there before and I wasn’t a member before,
so I had nothing to do with IBIS before I went to Bolivia. The reason I’m still a little bit active is because of my interest,
I wanted to do it.
I: Right, I don’t think I have any more questions on my list. But maybe Alexandra, do you have any follow up questions?
S: Yes. You mentioned a lot your boss from Latin America. Could you describe your relation, the type of communication
you had with her before and if there were any changes after you arrived there?
R: My language skills or ..?
S: No, no. Your relation with her: was it relaxed or...?
I: Your level of formality?
R: I’m still friends with her on Facebook, we agreed that we wouldn’t be Facebook friends while working together, but
the day we didn’t work together we became Facebook friends, because I lived with one of her friends, so we had a lot
in common. And so she helped me, she was the one who told me to apply for the student job I didn’t get and she was
also the one who told me to contact Stephen for the other little job there, so she is like really helping me a lot. Also
because she has a boyfriend from Ecuador and they were thinking moving to Columbia and I’ve been there before, she
asked me how it is living there, is it a good country and things like that. We really got to be friends while I was there.
32
I: I have another question actually, now that we are on this topic: who did you usually socialise while you were there?
What did you do on your spare time?
R: Good question: it was quite difficult to find. The beginning you have to be pro active when you come in this new
place, but I was a little bit lucky because a friend of my brother was there for a 3 months period for Red Politics – it is
called this NGO. Through this guy, he had a lot of contacts in the hip hop environment and La Paz and I met them and
ended up hanging out with these hip hop, rap guys all the time. I made a video with them on YouTube. You are very
much welcome to see if you want to.
I: Send us the link on mail.
R: I will do that.
I: I don’t have any more questions. Alexandra do you have any other questions?
S: No.
I: Thank you very much for participating.
Appendix 12: Interview 5
Country:
Sierra Leone
Duration of interview:
43:28
I: Let’s get started. If you want to state your basic info: what country were you, your age and possible your education?
R: Yes, sure. I was in Sierra Leone, in Freetown the capital and I was there for approximately six months. I was 25 at
the time I was there. I study International Development at Roskilde University. I’m writing my master thesis right now,
so basically that it was all I needed as I wanted to take six months off before I started writing my thesis. And I thought
that instead of just taking six months off and doing nothing or being here in Denmark, I found that internship and I
applied for it and I got it. I thought that would be a nice way to spend some time, to get out of school.
I: Yes. So, you didn’t get a credit transfer in relation to your course?
R: No. I’m actually not sure if I could because I only had my thesis left, so I didn’t have any semesters left to actually
spend it on. I’m not sure I would be able to, actually, even if I wanted to.
I: OK. Let’s talk about what you did and your internship with IBIS. You said you went to Freetown. What kind of office
you worked at? Can you tell us a little bit about how the daily work life was?
R: Yes, sure. So, we were around eight people at the office, it was IBIS’s country office in Sierra Leone. There are two
offices in Sierra Leone, so it was the main office, although the other office in [town name] was actually bigger, they
had more staff there. So, there were around 8 people: the country director, we had a policy adviser, me the intern and
some administrative staff finance and administration and a driver and an office assistant and then sometime around
May, I think, a new head of finance and administration arrived. He was a Danish guy, as well. So, there were some
structural change in IBIS and we had to take some positions that were previously managed regionally, but the regional
offices were closed down so we had to bring it into our office. We started every day at eight, the work day they said it
was eight to five but it was more often that it was six or seven. There was a lot of work. In the beginning I got rather
the boring tasks of editing and proof reading documents, stuff like that.
I: I was about to ask you that: what were your tasks? What was your title? What did you do?
33
R: My title was intern with thematic programmes in Sierra Leone. One was the education programme and the other
was the governance programme. That were the two main areas and I was actually attached to both on them. On
paper it was an equal measure but I spent a little bit more time on the educational programme than on the
governance programme.
I: OK.
R: In the beginning I just did whatever people asked me to do. After a couple of months they allowed me to start on
some things on myself if I wanted to, but in the beginning it very much consisted of editing documents and proof
reading documents, going to meetings with our policy adviser specially to represent IBIS. There were a lot of meetings
with the World Bank and IMF, different forums, other NGOs, trying to harmonize the whole NGO approach to
development in Sierra Leone. So, we spent a lot of time talking to other NGOs, trying to harmonize our efforts and
what I usually do was to attend these meetings with my colleague. I really didn’t participate in the meetings but I was
there more to get a sense of what’s going on and maybe write a short description of what had been going on in the
meeting and present to our country director, so he would know what had been going on. And then further on we had
an evaluation. I think that my first big assignment was an evaluation of one of our programmes. We had a project
involving vocational stress training, where we took young people, youth that didn’t have a proper education, but
were, more or less, too old to go to regularly primary school, and we taught them skills. We set up this setting where
they could learn skills like sewing, weaving or motorcycle repair or agriculture, stuff like that, so they would have
some kind of skill they could live over. We had been running this programme for around a year and we hired an
outside consultant to come in and evaluate, just to look in if it was going as it was supposed to and if we are meeting
the goals and I went along with this consultant as a kind of research assistant and the interviews and discuss with this
consultant how it was going in relation to IBIS expectations and the partners expectations and also to look at the
whole set up, was it working as it should.
I: I have a question about this external consultant; you said you worked closely with this person. This means that you
were the IBIS representative?
R: I was kind of... we had a lot of discussions with our country director and our programme director on education, but I
kind of acted as the liaison between IBIS and the consultant, the way I saw it, anyway. It was the kind of running back
and forth, especially in the process, after we had done all the interviews and our consultant made some draft reports
for us to review. I was holding a lot of time to kind of explain some stuff to the country director or the programme
director didn’t agree to. We talked about and if we couldn’t still figure it out what was about, of course they would go
and talk with the consultant by that point. But in the beginning I spent a lot of time trying to explain things to my...I
was also involved a little bit in the drafting of the report, so I was continually talking to the consultant while I was
talking to the directors. So I guess, in some way I was kind of the liaison between the two.
I: OK. This leads me to another question. You mentioned in the beginning of your internship you were doing just what
people were asking you to do. Was that a kind of loose structure at the office? Were you the kind of person to whom
everybody could go for help or was it only for your supervisor? How did that work?
I: My supervisor was the country director and maybe he was the one giving me tasks. Of course if people around the
office would have something that needed to be done in a hurry and I could help in anyway, they would ask me, but my
supervisor was very concerned about me having the time to do what I was actually supposed to do, so we had a lot of
talks about me being able to say no to tasks if I had a lot of different tasks, because apparently I didn’t experienced
this myself but he said that they had some problems with people seeing interns as just the guy to throw assignments
like proof reading this or make this graph or this figure or whatever. So they would ask their interns to do it instead of
doing themselves. Also he was very keen on making me understand that I should just say no if I didn’t have time to do
stuff.
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I: Just one last question in regards to that. Was that sort of IBIS procedure or was that something you think was
between you and your supervisor?
R: As I understood it the whole thing about talking to me about prioritising and what jobs should I take... I really don’t
know it because I only have been to that one, but as far I understood it there was mainly my supervisor who was
concerned about this. I don’t know if it is the same and in the other offices, but it didn’t seem like it was a regularly,
overall IBIS approach to the whole internship thing.
I: The reason I’m asking is these are the organizational dynamics that we want to look in. This brings me to the next
question. You must have signed your terms of reference when you began your internship. Moving into your
preparations: how strict did you follow that during your internship?
R: I didn’t follow it very strictly: maybe I might have done 50% of what was on the term of reference and then I did a
lot of work outside my terms of reference, but my country director mainly said when I arrived was that these terms of
reference were a kind of guideline, it wasn’t made to be followed to the letter and if there was something I was more
interested in than something else I was welcome to tell him and we could always discuss leaving some of the things
out or bringing something new in. So we revised it ongoing through my internship to fit both the needs of IBIS and the
interests that I had in the different things. Whilst being there I had three major tasks that took so much time that
there wasn’t time to go through all the points of the terms of reference, because these three tasks were so huge that I
really didn’t have time for anything else. It wasn’t a problem because there were three really interesting tasks, but it
meant that my terms of reference went in the background and were revised once in a while, but I didn’t really look
and I really didn’t think about it as my guide on how it should go during the internship.
I: What would you say about the level of autonomy you had?
R: I had the tasks that I was given by my boss, but he was very open about it. Of course if it was something really
urgent, he would tell me and I would have to do that right away but I was encouraged to prioritise myself and do it the
way I felt it was best. I actually started a couple of things on my own initiative, but because of these three major tasks
in the last three or four months of my internship I didn’t have time to finish any, which of course was annoying, but
understandable because we had some more urgent issues. But generally I was allowed some autonomy, but still of
course within the frames of what IBIS needed to be done, but if I had things from my own initiative and I had time for
it I was encouraged to do it. If I started something by myself, maybe they could use maybe they couldn’t but I was
allowed to do it if I had the time.
I: OK. Let’s move a bit into a different area, namely what went prior to this internship, how it all started. We know from
talking to the internship supervisor at the main office a little bit about the hiring process and it is the policy. Could you
tell us how you got the internship?
R: Yes. I knew pretty early on, that this would be something that I might like to do, but I wasn’t sure. But by the end,
more or less midyear 2010 I decided that I wanted to do this, and I knew from my cousin who works for IBIS in
Mozambique that they have these internships and a lot of organisations do, but she talked to me about IBIS and she
made it sound really well, really good. So I found the posting on the website and Sierra Leone sounded really exciting
and it was the system of governance I reacted. I was very interested in the whole extracting industry, it was very
exciting. So, I wrote an application and received an email that they wanted to see me for an interview in Copenhagen,
I actually thought that it went really, really bad, but apparently not, they called three days later, I think, and offered
me the internship and after that we had the introduction at IBIS for two or three days, all the interns I think we were
six or seven going that semester, so I met up with them and talked with some old interns from other countries but
also one that has been to Sierra Leone. And then I met another intern who was going to another office in Sierra Leone,
so... all the arrangements for Visas, for tickets we had to do it by ourselves and I did all of that with her.
35
I: I just have a few questions.
R: Yes?
I: You mentioned the introduction seminar was two or three days and you met the old interns. What was the level of
contact with the old interns, not only at this seminar, but in general?
R: Before the seminar I had a short email exchange with the one who went to Freetown before me. They had six
months between the previous intern and me when they didn’t have an intern. He was in Denmark, so we had a short
email exchange, but I didn’t meet him face to face until this seminar, and after this seminar we met once or twice just
to discuss how it was in Freetown and where to go; both professionally and socially and stuff like that. I think I met
him that one time after... actually after I left to Freetown he came to Freetown to do fieldwork on his thesis, and he
came there and we hung out in Freetown. When I came home we met again in Copenhagen, he got a position in
Freetown by then, and so he was going back there. We talked a little bit about how the development has been and
how the office is now and some new people got there and in February this year, I went back to do some research in
Freetown, so I met him there. I actually had quite a lot of contact with him, both during and after my internship, but
before I left I think I only met him twice and had a short email exchange.
I: OK. That’s another thing we would like to look into, the preparations, not just in terms of the actual work, but also
these practicalities. How did you prepare yourself for going to Sierra Leone?
R: Well, besides the total practical things of getting Visas, and getting the vaccines I read up about the country and
prepare the explanations for my friends, because they all thought that there is this war torn, really crime-ridden
country where everybody got killed all the time, so I had to check up on that and figure out how it was. Besides
looking at plane tickets and vaccines and stuff like that I didn’t really do anything that intensive, I just kind of jumped
on the plane and hoped for the best, of course I trusted IBIS that they know what they were doing down there, but I
pretty much left and took it as it came when I was down there.
I: What was the extent of the help or the assistance from IBIS in this sense?
R: Well, in Denmark we didn’t get any kind of help, of course they helped with the seminar and what to expect and
stuff like that, but all the practicalities of getting visas and getting all the things together we had to do it by ourselves.
But we were writing emails with the country director in Freetown at the time, because we had to time all the things:
when do we arrive, when we should start working, when we should stop working and all this. And he was very large
about it; he said you just get the tickets and we’ll plan the whole thing accordingly. That made it a bit easier planning
the trip itself. And when we arrived they actually tried to pick us from the airport or as close as they could get to the
airport. They found a place for us to stay in Freetown; I found out later that they aren’t required to; because they had
contacts from the previous interns. The previous intern had been there. So, we actually had a place to stay from the
moment we landed, they drove us directly to the house and the other intern, left for the other office. We had a house
from the beginning and everything was pretty much taken care of. The only thing we had difficulties with was finding
the office the first time we had to go there, because they had given us the address but they didn’t pronounce it the
way we did, and so it took us some time. Other than that they were actually really helpful and we didn’t really need
anything. When we needed to take our residence permits, we just gave our visas to the driver and he went out to
town and make sure that was OK and came back with our residence permits and we didn’t really do anything to get
them ourselves, so that made it a lot easier. In Denmark we were pretty much on our own and in Sierra Leone we had
help with pretty much everything.
I: This thing of going straight to the house and accommodation being already taken care of. Did you know this before
you went? What was your plan when you left?
36
R: When we left, we actually knew it, because we also communicated with the administrator and she wrote us and
told us that we have this room waiting for us when we landed. We heard about this house from the previous intern,
before we actually got it. Our original plan was to find a hotel or a hostel or a guest house for the first couple of nights
until we could figure out some more permanent accommodation, but then we found out that we really didn’t need to,
so we didn’t have the chance of getting into the looking for places or checking up on places before as we actually had
a place from the beginning.
I: Just one more thing about something you said earlier. You mentioned briefly that you went to an interview and you
didn’t think it went so well. How did this interview take place?
R: Well it was at IBIS office, it was with the internship coordinator (I think you talked with her) and there was this
other women, who had spent some time in Sierra Leone, she hadn’t been there for long. She had been there for a
month or two, but she was kind of the person they had in Denmark who was more knowledgeable about Sierra Leone
of all the staff they had in Denmark and of course they didn’t wanted to fly in a local just to hire an intern; it was sort
of understandable. It was these two and I came in and we talked a little bit about my application, of course, and my
credentials. They actually made it quite a big point about talking to me about all this thing of leaving Denmark for six
months, because apparently they had some issues with interns wanting to go home after a month or two, or getting
home sick or stuff like that or not being able to live somewhere primitively compared to what they were used to. So
we spent a lot of time talking about that and they asked me if I was sure I was up for it and stuff like that. We talked
about what I have been doing and how we could relate it to what I could be doing in Sierra Leone, especially with this
extractive sector that I was really interested in and how it could be connected to my previous studies at university. So I
think that, maybe, half of it was kind of my qualifications and talking about that and what were my strong points and
the rest of it was talking about the whole issue of going six months to a place new that might be a bit more primitive
that what I was used to and how I would feel about that.
I: OK. Let’s talk a little bit about that, because I know from looking at several IBIS internship adverts that they often
require or recommend that you had previous experience, either in the country you are going or to another 3 rd world
country. What was your level of experience in that sense?
R: I spent four months in Guatemala in 2006, and that was pretty much my experience with developing countries, but
the place I stayed in Guatemala wasn’t primitive at all and I never felt that I was in a 3 rd world country, but that was
kind of the experience I had. I caught those experiences in Sierra Leone when we went up to villages and we spent the
night in a couple of villages and of course there was no light, running water, but it wasn’t really something I noticed
that much, I think.
I: OK. Let’s move on a little bit. We also want to look into the social interactions that took place during your internship.
I’m thinking both what happened at your office but as well in your social life outside your work with IBIS.
R: The house I lived at... We were four people living there. It was me, a Columbian, an English girl and an Italian. So
we lived together and we connected really well and we kind of became friends right off. Two of them had been in
Sierra Leone before so they could kind of guide us around and tell us where to go to do whatever we wanted to do.
Actually that made it pretty easy, as at the interview the internship coordinator talked about how the first month
could get kind of lonely because you have to meet people and start all over, and all that stuff. But this didn’t happen
because I met these three people and we really connected well. After a month I found out that IBIS in Freetown
shared an office building with an Irish organisation called Concern and apparently they had a Danish staff member,
and somebody introduced us and we became friends really fast too. So, I had this rather huge social circle in
Freetown, which meant that I had a lot of people to see, and I never felt alone, as I lived in this house with other three
people and there were other people, so that worked really well. But that was mainly outside of work and I really didn’t
see my colleagues socially at all. The other intern in Kono, whenever she was in Freetown we hang out and when I was
37
in Kono we spent a lot of time, of course. But this was actually the only staff member I saw outside of work. Then the
house where we lived it was owned by a woman, who had a son, so we hang out with him, he came with his friends
and we went out together a couple of times and they showed us the non tourist or NGO workers parts of Freetown,
which was nice. There was like four or five restaurants and three beaches that are mainly used by NGO workers. So it
was nice to hang out with them and go to parties where it wasn’t all white people dancing. Generally I noticed in
Freetown this tendency as expatriates hang out only expatriates, there are not that many friendships between locals
and foreigners NGO workers, as I experienced anyway. So, it was nice to meet these guys and show us some different
parts of Freetown that we wouldn’t have gotten to see otherwise.
I: You mentioned that in this house where you lived in, there were several other nationalities. How did they get to live
there?
R: The Columbian was an intern with the pharmacy port of Sierra Leone, dealing with medication and all the
pharmaceutical issues in Sierra Leone and she got that through an American NGO, I think, she was there on a six
month internship just like me, but she decided to extend hers. And the English girl worked with UN with FDO, she was
there on a consultancy contract, but kept on extending it and her boss kept on asking her to stay, I think that originally
she was there for one year, but she has been there two and staying for another. And the Italian girl, Sara, she was
there with UNICEF as a communication officer, but actually she ended up her contract while I was there and went
home to Italy, because she couldn’t find anything else. But that was what they were doing and it was kind of a
developmental work, so we had a lot to talk about at the dinner table.
I: OK. There is another question here I would like to ask, regarding your work with IBIS. You mentioned that you mainly
answered to your supervisor, but what was the extent of communication between you and the main office in
Denmark?
R: I really didn’t have that much communication with the main office in Denmark, mainly the internship coordinator
emailed me every once in a while just to see what was going on, to give her an update. I told her everything was fine,
and told her something about the tasks. Other than that I think I wrote an email to someone from head office, I
needed some logos for a presentation. That was basically the extent of communication I had with the main office in
Denmark. Then I had a little bit of communication with the office in Ghana, regarding some editing I had to do. Of
course when I was in Kono I answered to the programme directors from there. But in Freetown I only answered to my
supervisor, the country director. I was at the same level of hierarchy as everybody else, but he was the one giving me
tasks, if anybody else would give me tasks they had to be prioritised lower than his and thus I had a lot of time or he
didn’t give me too much to do.
I: OK. And then what happened when you finished your internship, when you came back? What was the extent of your
communication with IBIS since?
R: I wrote an internship report, of course and wrote a story for their website. Actually I was supposed to have a
debrief with the internship coordinator, but we never got around, I think they are really busy with restructuring and
I’m very busy with my thesis. I communicated with the internship coordinator about job opportunities and new
interns, of course I went to the introduction seminar in December, I think it must have been and talked with the new
interns about my experience and stuff like that. I had some contact, but only with the internship coordinator.
I: I know from other interns we’ve spoken to, that the previous interns wrote a sort of country guide with the
practicalities, how to get around and all these issues. Did you do one of those as well?
R: Well, actually I was supposed to but I had the one that the previous intern had made, which pretty much covered
things, but of course I made some developments as his one year and a half old, but before leaving I talked with the
country director and he said that they wouldn’t have an intern in the next six months so I never got around, and I
38
think that they do have interns with right now, but so much time had passed that I never got around to and it is
actually quite a bad form of me, but I met the interns going there and talked to them. But as far as I remember I didn’t
do an updated version, as I was supposes to do.
I: What was your level of contact with these new interns, since the introduction seminar?
R: Actually I haven’t had any. I told them they were welcome to write or call, but I haven’t heard anything from them,
it’s only been that seminar. I think that one of them was going to Kono so I think she was in contact with the other
intern, because I don’t know that much about Kono, I was there for maybe three or four weeks combined. But as none
of them was going to the Freetown office I didn’t have too much to offer, I could only talk about how IBIS is working in
Sierra Leone or how I felt about the whole internship experience. So I haven’t been talking with them about anything,
at all.
I: OK. That more or less concludes what we wanted to ask you. But I do have one more question that we have the
others as well. Why do you think IBIS has interns?
R: Well that’s a good question. I think, of course, there is a whole issue of getting people out there and giving them
some experience and personally I thought it was really nice trying to use all of my theoretical knowledge from
university in a practical way and I can see how that makes sense in using interns, because it will produce better staff
members for them later on or for the NGO environment. I guess as well is free labour for them, I don’t know how
much that matters for them but I could imagine that it is nice way to get some of the jobs done, without having to pay
for it. I think it is a mix of the two, I don’t know if it is 50/50, when you get free labour but also give someone the
experience they might need to actually be able to get into the job market once they are done with their school.
I: That concludes my questions. Just to see if Alexandra might have some follow up questions.
S: I do have one. You said that at the beginning you had some boring tasks as editing, proof reading. What were your
expectations regarding your tasks before getting there?
R: That’s a pretty good question. My expectations was that mainly I would had to do something with researching, I
didn’t really know what it might be, because my terms were so broad, but I knew from the beginning that it would be
some of these tasks of editing and proof reading, and I also had an idea that it would be most of that stuff in the
beginning, and I think that my country director told me when I arrived that the first month it would be those tasks,
because he needed to figure it out who I was and what kind of jobs he could give me. And so I had to live with it and it
pay off because he gave me some really interesting tasks later on: there was this evaluation I talked about it and we
had to do an appraisal of another district, we wanted to maybe go into it, evaluation of UNICEF with other local NGOs
and finally did a project proposal. Which was really interesting, but at some points I felt that it was too much
responsibility thrown at me, but of course I was always welcomed to ask for help if I needed. So I kind of expected that
there will be some boring tasks at the beginning, but I spent a little bit more time on them that I thought I would have
to, but it really pay off in the end. After two months I didn’t do anything like that. All my tasks were actually really
interesting.
I: I think that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for participating.
Appendix 13: Interview 6
Country
Sierra Leone
Duration of interview
40:37
I: If you want to start out with your basic information: like were you did your internship, how long you were there,
maybe your age and what you studied.
39
R: Yes, sure. I’m 27 and I study at Roskilde University. At the time when I went in the internship I had a bachelor in
International Studies and Social Sciences and now I’m on my master on the same subject. I went there for 6 months in
2011. I went to Sierra Leone.
I: Where were you based in Sierra Leone?
R: In a district called Kono, at that time it was the only place where they had a program office, now they also have it in
another district. They had all their activities in Kono.
I: Now they have the country office in the capital, Freetown, right?
R: Yes, they have the country office in Freetown, of course.
I: They had that when you were there as well?
R: Yes.
I: Right, let’s get started then. If you just want tell us what your tasks were and so on?
R: First of all I was supposed to be primarily on the governance program. They had two programs: education and
governance. I was supposed to support their program implementation, however when I arrived they were renewing
their partnership contracts and most of the tasks were on hold, so there wasn’t much for me to do there, I was doing
some photos on some of their 2010 activities, especially on the one with their partner organisation. In the beginning I
mostly assisted in planning renewing one of their partner’s project proposals along with some minor tasks, a lot of
meetings with stakeholders, a lot of coordination meetings with NGOs and the local government and I also did some
other things with the gender facilitator, we arranged and facilitate the International Women’s Day. So in the beginning
it was a little bit confusing and I also used a lot of time just getting to know the city, getting to know the people, what
the programs were actually about. And, then after a while I started doing what I was supposed to do also, which
ended up being my main task. And that was to make a project together with staff from both the education team and
also the governance team, and we made this... it was supposed to be a project on synergy, to enhance the synergy
between the two programme teams because they didn’t work so much together and its’ supposed to be on two
issues: gender and youth, so we started a program on volunteerism among youth in city and we collaborated with six
youth organisations and then I was the one that was like the main coordinator of the project and I was also the
coordinator of the volunteers that worked, which meant I was... of course I did everything with the staff, had the
support from the staff and also I had help and support from other partners, but I was the one that designed the
project primarily and helped in the implementation, making the budget, making the transfer of the money to all the
volunteers, monitoring the program activities every week and making a final evaluation. So, it was really fun for me to
try to be...I was given a lot of responsibility and I was a part of the entire process: starting up a project, following it
through and also ending it. It was a really great, great experience but also incredible difficult. We had weekly meetings
with the volunteers and they were coming to my office, some of them every day just to say hi or if they had a
problem, an issue with their work and they wanted me to help them or support them. After such a short period of
time, I suddenly had this role of authority and that was quite interesting, quite a balance to do. And that was the main
thing I did for IBIS, from March until I went home. I also did some work for the education team, and helped them
make a survey for UNICEF in the district, together with the other intern from Sierra Leone; I know that you talked with
him yesterday. This was a very interesting job to do, because we got to travel around the entire district, to make
interviews, at different schools, units of supportive schools and talked to different groups in the schools, the children
government, that were supposed to start and school boards; to see how the work is going, and we ended up making
up a baseline after doing these interviews; it’s very nice.
I: A lot of diverse tasks?
40
R: Yes, definitely.
I: I have a few questions. Sounds like you had a lot of responsibility. How was the hierarchical structure? In the terms of
you making decisions on your own, how that all worked?
R: In the major decisions I had to talk to my colleagues and it worked like that: we made a project team that was
based on me and a gender facilitator from each program and I was sharing office with one of them, so we would
discuss all the time. Even though it was a lot of responsibility I had the support of the staff all the time, especially the
education director. Eventually it wasn’t the idea that he wanted to implement for a long time, so he was really
interested in this project, whereas the governance director wasn’t very keen on it, but after a while he thought “OK
maybe this would work”. That’s when you feel very proud about it. I talked with them several times a week; we had
meetings on this project in the design phase. So, I had a lot of support, definitely. But when it comes to hierarchy it’s
very interesting: Sierra Leone is very patriarchal, male dominated. It was interesting for me as one of the directors is
from United States and the other one is from Sierra Leone and they had a very different way of treating me and so.
Because, definitely the education director was asking all the time for my inputs and the governance director was: you
have to do this and this. It took me a few months before I got used to their styles and they got used to me, maybe
because I was the first intern ever to be at the office, that also was a special situation for them. IBIS had told me how
it would be like, so I sat my mind to and I wasn’t surprise but, if course it was a little bit difficult to begin with.
I: Let’s talk a little bit about that. Because that’s the other thing we would really like to get into: how were you
prepared by IBIS for this internship? We would like to look at all levels, but in terms of your tasks, let’s start with that.
How did they prepare you for this internship?
R: How did they prepare me for my tasks? Well, actually my terms of reference was very broad, it was very difficult to
know what I was going to do, but they did send me from the country office a lot of material on the programs, so I read
like 600- 700 pages of info just on the programs, very boring. Of course it gave me some idea. It’s not impossible to
prepare somebody for that work; it’s very difficult because the tasks are also formed when you arrive. But of course
they said you’re going to do some implementation on monitoring, and then... For example I bought a book on
monitoring, so I tried to look into, but it was very abstract for me.
I: OK. Let’s talk a little bit about what other kind of preparation you went through. Let’s take it from the beginning and
tell us how you got the internship.
R: Well it was very simple, they just posted the vacant internship on their web page, and then I applied and they called
me in for an interview, actually I went to two interviews – also for the one in Freetown, shortly after they called me
and said that I got it, so...
I: Why did you look at their web page? Where did you heard about IBIS before?
R: Actually, one of my sister’s friends, who I worked with before, went to Angola with IBIS one year before me, and
she talked a lot about IBIS. At that time I was trying to figure it out where I want to apply, and one of the things she
said that they are giving to their interns a lot of responsibility. Also when I looked at the advert it was very ambitious
and I found it very interesting.
I: One of the things we have seen in the advert is that they usually ask for a level of experience with the country, or
with Africa in this case or in general with 3rd world countries. What was your level of previous experience?
R: Well I never travelled to Sierra Leone before. I read about it, I’ve seen documentaries and things like that but I
didn’t have much knowledge about Sierra Leone. I had been working with national NGOs before and also smaller, local
NGOs and I have been travelling with them also. I have been to Lebanon and I have been working a lot with Sanctitut
41
Youth just before I applied and they wanted me to do work on youth and gender, especially youth so it was just my
luck that I have been working a lot with youth and I had some knowledge on developmental issues from my studies
and what I think it was really important was that I had my mind set to go to the programme office. I do not know how
many applications they have received, but they were like: you have to be really well prepared because this a really
special place to go and it’s very isolated, but I wanted that hands on ground experience. The office in Kono has
eighteen employees and just one foreigner and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get to know some locals,
because I had a prejudice that if you would be in Freetown you would hang around with all the other expats and I
didn’t wanted to do that, at least not all the time. I think that the voluntary work was the primary reason I got it.
I: Let me ask you: these expectations that you had with the office and getting to know the locals - is that what it
happened when you got there? Is that what you experienced?
R: Yes, definitely. I received a really, really warm welcome when I arrived. I was very excited about what to expect,
because I really didn’t know anything about it and there wasn’t any other interns to talk to about it; that’s not true,
there has been another intern from Freetown that had visited Kono for a month in total, so we could talk about it. But
I really didn’t know what to expect and how it feels like to be there, but I think that at the office was the best work
environment I ever tried, because people were very nice to me and very nice to each other. It also it was a very special
context to be in, because whenever you are outside the office you are the white girl as there are so few expats in
Kono, even though is still one of the places where there are quite a lot compared to other places, but still you see
someone once every week or something like that, it’s not like they are all over the place. Inside the office people was
used to seeing IBIS staff, they have been travelling a lot so there wasn’t this white girl relationship, we were kind of
equal, even though there is a hierarchy, but that was mostly to my boss, because all the other staff was welcoming
me, being really nice, and we also do things outside work. After a few months there I moved in with two staff
members and it was like living with family, like babysit one’s colleague child and things like that. I didn’t feel lonely at
any time at all, because they were taking such good care of me.
I: This working environment you mentioned, you said you had this feeling of people being equal. Do you think that’s
indicative for IBIS or do you think that was local to your office?
R: That’s hard for me to say. I haven’t worked with IBIS before, I don’t know how it works in other countries, but... of
course I had some experience at the Freetown office, it was a very different atmosphere, not to say that the people
wasn’t equal, but... I think it was more about the certain role that you had to fill out and it wasn’t as relaxed, but you
know I wasn’t there for that long. Generally they seem to have a good working environment.
I: Was your experience in terms of communication with the country office and the back home office in Denmark?
R: Well I really didn’t have any contact with the head office during my stay, only in the beginning they would ask how
we are doing, but in the end I got malaria and I was writing a little bit with them when I was sick, but apart of that, no.
And it was OK; there wasn’t any need for it. Country office, not much communication either; that is something that,
both the other intern and I thought of it as a problem, actually.
I: How so?
R: But I think that, maybe just because we were interns and, of course there was some communication, but not that
much. Of course there was a lot of communication going between the country director and the programme director,
I’m sure.
I: What was the problem that you and the intern saw?
42
R: The lack of information, going back and forth. I think that he was working with the policy adviser and, at least the
other intern had the idea that... in theory the programme office was supposed to send information to the country
office about how the programme is working and evidence of things that are working or to make advocacy based on
the findings; they made a lot of advocacy, but the other intern had that idea that the information flow was very
limited.
I: Was that all work related? The lack in communication was that all work related or did it stretch further? The reason
why we are asking this is because you said when you got the offer from IBIS; they warned you that it will be an isolated
position. Would you agree on that sort of statement?
R: I’m not sure what you are asking.
I: When they told you it would be an isolated position...
R: It was mostly in terms of Freetown being far away and difficult to get there, not in terms of talking or
communicating.
I: OK. Because that’s what I wanted to make sure of it: what kind of isolation are we talking about.
R: Yes it was more in geographical terms. But, also I don’t think that my experience in communication flow is very
adequate, so... I think that the communication flow could be better, I’m sure they wouldn’t know that in the country
office. But the daily communication was quite good.
I: Alright. One more thing I want to ask you before we move to the next question. You said that when you got to the
office you got a really warm welcome. Could you tell us how were you welcomed?
R: First of all I had spent two weeks in Freetown and I was getting to know people there and I was like: how this is
going to be in Kono, I don’t know anyone. And then I arrived at my hotel and in the same night a guy from the office
came and greeted me and I hadn’t expected that at all. And we were talking for an hour, I went to bed and I was like
“OK that’s nice”. And he would come back the day after. I started and they had something like kind of small [Not clear]
emigrations, they had names due for me. There were one or two weeks where I was supposed to meet the partners
and just have a lot of introductions and that was very nice, the way they were around me, the way they were talking
to me.
I: OK. Let me ask you then. This person coming to greet you and the two weeks introduction was that planned before
hand by IBIS or do you think it was just the office that did it on their own?
R: The schedule thing was definitely planned. The fact that this guy who ended up being a very good friend of mine, he
came by, I’m not sure why, I didn’t ask him. But I’m sure that, probably the education director had asked him to go
and say hi, but he also was living like two minutes away from the hostel, so... I’m not sure.
I: OK. Let’s move on a bit from what you did down there and what went on. Let’s go back to what happened in
Denmark, because we would like to look at what kind of preparation did you went through. We know that often they
have these seminars where their interns go to beforehand. Did you go to the seminar and can you tell us something
about it?
R: Yes, it was a two days seminar, quite a long time ago; it was almost two years ago. But [Not clear] it was the staff
that came and talked about the organisation and we had an introduction to different issues, like health issues for
example, I think that took of a lot of time. And we also had a separate talk with the staff that had some experience in
the country where we were supposed to go. Actually it wasn’t anyone with that much knowledge about Sierra Leone.
Then we met former interns, so I talked with this guy that has been in Sierra Leone. We talked about customs and we
43
talked in general, because we were going to really different countries. We didn’t talk about the positions we have as
an intern at the office or the local community, or how you should prepare yourself for that. We also talked about how
important it is to observe, listen or learn before you take a wrong step in the wrong direction. We talked a lot about
that, and also how to make blogs and how to write articles and things like that.
I: This former intern that sort of did a bit of introduction in regards to the customs... Did you feel like you could use
that? Do you have examples where it helped?
R: I can’t really remember. I think we mostly talked about practical things and he also told me about the dynamics in
the office. I don’t know if it helped me or just gave me some idea before I went, but then when I came... OK I think he
told me a bit about the director and what I could expect having him as a boss, so being aware of that helped me a
little bit. I think that most of the things are learnt by doing in these kinds of situations. But I also did read books on
history, local customs, religion and how the traditional governance system works.
I: Alright. Something else we would like to talk about is your social interactions down there. You already mentioned
that there weren’t many expats in your area. Could you tell us who you spent time, while you were down there?
R: Actually one thing I didn’t mentioned was that before I went I contacted a NGO which is called V aid, is under Cafe
Retro, they have all their projects because is a non profit cafe and all their earnings go to projects in Sierra Leone, they
have one in Freetown, in another district and then in Kono. So I contacted them, because I knew that they were
sending down interns once in a while, and I was lucky because they had two interns when I came. So for the first few
months I spent some time with the one who stayed longer. And because I was living in a hotel in the beginning there
were others NGO workers, diamond dealers, diamond workers, government officials, people coming for quick stops,
but also there were people staying there for a quite long period of time. It isn’t so much to do in Kono, the problem is
that there are a lot of beautiful places to go, but if you don’t have a car it’s impossible to go anywhere, so I didn’t go
anywhere. I mostly went for walks, went to the market, read books, just hanging around with my colleagues, also
these guys from the youth group, many of them became good friends and we just hang out, do nothing, talk. A few
months after the implementation of the programme I would work also in the week-ends, because there wasn’t
anything else to do and there was too much work to be done during the week. But I had a few weeks of holiday and I
went to Freetown a few times, and there are a lot of things to do in Freetown, is like a different world.
I: OK. Let me see what else I have on my list here. We pretty much covered a lot of things we wanted to talk about it,
there is still a question regarding what you did when you came back in terms of your contact with IBIS. What was the
extent of your contact with IBIS after you finished working in Sierra Leone?
R: Well, I had to deliver some different papers for them and an evaluation, the country guide and another evaluation
and an article for the web page, things like that. And we were supposed to have a meeting, like an evaluation meeting
together, also with the other intern from Freetown, but they have been really busy and kept on moving it, so we
didn’t have that yet, but [Not clear]. I only communicated with them about this evaluation.
I: OK. You mentioned that your terms of reference were very broad. How strictly did you follow your terms of reference
when you were away?
R: I was told that it wasn’t... I got the impression that it wasn’t so important to follow them strictly, of course we tried,
we all wanted to happen but it was obvious that I wouldn’t be able to do all the tasks, because it was very long. I think
that, maybe I did 60% or something, just to put it down to a per cent. We tried to follow it, but it really didn’t make
sense in all. As I said earlier the programme wasn’t implementing anything, so how could I assist in the programme
implementation. I was supposed to assist the communication to the head office but I was waiting tasks, I was told that
if they would ask to produce articles you could do that, but they never asked.
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I: Doesn’t make sense in that sense.
R: Yes.
I: Right. I should have told from the beginning that my partner will come with some follow up questions in the end. I
don’t have any other question to ask you. Maybe Alexandra has some?
S: I just have one, because you already answered the others. Were you ever contacted by the next intern?
R: Yes. I have been contacted on email just once. It was very practical, just two questions, so very little. But I know
that at the seminar, where the other intern went, I’m sure that she had asked a lot of questions.
S: That’s all.
I: OK. Do you have anything that you would like to add to the discussion we had?
R: Let me see. No, I don’t think so. If you have any further questions you could ring me.
I: Actually I do have one more question that we asked the others as well. Why do you thing IBIS has interns?
R: OK. I think that it’s a great opportunity for them to have us as the kind of link to the programme office, maybe
that’s not their main idea of it, but it could be quite important. And of course I also think that it would be nice for
people to get experience in an organisation, as the organisations do tend to hire people with practical experience.
What else? I don’t know.
I: We are not looking for a definitive answer; we just want to hear what your take is on.
R: I don’t really have an answer for that.
I: That’s quite OK. I think that concludes our interview.
Appendix 14: Interview 7
Country
Liberia
Duration of interview
50:23
I: Can you just give us some basic info about the country you went to, how long you were there and so on.
R: I went to Liberia from august and returned in the beginning of November, and the internship went on until
Christmas. So three months in Liberia and two months in Denmark. Or rather one and a half month in Denmark. Do
you want me to continue?
I: Sure, if you want you can move into what you did there and where in Liberia it was.
R: The internship took place in a small town called Fish Town in the southern part of Liberia. My job was to conduct a
study about an IBIS programme called ‘youth education pack programme’. The YEP programme, which was a
programme for illiterate young people between 15 and 25. Most of the people that I talked with were between 18 and
39 because the age span was extended. The age group had varied with the groups that had gone through the project.
The study was to look into how these young people had improved their livelihoods from participating in this
programme. Do you know about this programme? It’s basically about empowering young people through basic
literacy and numeracy skills and skills training both what they call life skill training in, for example democracy, health,
nutrition, and stuff like that. Then there was also practical skills training like carpentry, masonry or tailoring or stuff
like that. The purpose is that after these ten months of training they construct groups of these graduates and then
they are supposed to go together and make some income generating activity. For example a carpentry shop. The task
45
for me was to see how they were doing now so it was mainly the students who had graduated. Either they had just
graduated or it was the first group of YEP graduates. Then [my task was] also to look into how the present students
were doing during the programme.
I: When you say “see how they were doing”, what does that entail?
R: I used semi-structured interview guides like you and looked into how their economic situation was like. I also
looked at their personal situation, how they felt and what their dreams were; what had the programme given to
them? Had their livelihoods improved and in which ways did they improve? Most of them were very focused on the
opportunities that these trades (carpentry, masonry, tailoring) had given them. The fact that people were looking at
them as young people who had a future with opportunities for generating some kind of income and were able to take
care of themselves and also their families made them very very proud.
I: What was your academic background for doing this study?
R: I’m studying a master’s in African Studies and I’m an international social worker, so of course this was a great
opportunity for me to go out and practise some of my skills as a social worker but also to practise the research skills
that I had been introduced to in African studies which is a part of the University of Copenhagen. I have been to Sierra
Leone with a small NGO so in Liberia there were a lot of similarities but also great differences. When I went to Sierra
Leone I was part of quite a large group of Danes and it was also a very primitive place in the jungle in Sierra Leone.
That was similar in Liberia. I felt that I had some kind of preparation and I knew how I would manage and handle a
situation like that. The most significant difference for me was to be alone and the fact that there were no other
internationals in Fish Town was quite a big difference also and a challenge.
I: A few questions to what you’ve just said. One thing we really like to look into is the preparation that IBIS’s interns go
through and I know from looking at the internship adverts that they often look for previous experience in the country,
in Africa in your case, and if not then in a developing country. Having been to Sierra Leone you obviously had some
experience, but if you had to briefly outline it, what would you say was your level of experience and what kind of
experience did you have?
R: I conducted field work for my bachelor project in Cairo two years ago. When I applied for the internship it was one
year ago. I felt that I had some kind of experience in doing field work; conducting interviews, and you know the
theoretical aspects of conducting research like this. In that sense I felt that the task was quite good for me, and that I
had the kind of experience that was needed. Then what really made a difference for me was that this was the first
time on my own in a developing country like Liberia. That’s quite difficult to prepare yourself for completely.
I: That was going to be my next question. How do you prepare, or rather, how did IBIS prepare you?
R: First, of course there was the first interview for the internship which was like.. They said themselves that this was a
kind of scary advert or they knew that this kind of internship was kind of challenging. The place, Fish Town was a
special place. It’s a very beautiful place, but its also very isolated in some way. Its in the jungle there’s no electricity,
and no running water. There’s maybe a couple of thousand people living in Fish Town, and then it’s a three to four
hour drive to the next big city with other international people. The picture of where I was going to be; they really
wanted to prepare me and letting me know that this was not an easy task. It was not easy to decide on whether to go
or not, because I knew that this was going to be quite a big challenge for me, but also a very big experience. I thought
from my previous experience, which has been very positive and interesting, that this is what I want to do in the future.
I felt that this was a very good opportunity despite the challenges. We were all aware that this was going to be a
difficult task. We had two days of preparations together at IBIS, all the new interns. I think that of course it depends
on how many people are going to a place like Fish Town where there are no other international staff or quite isolated
places like that; but I think they could have focused more on being an intern, being a white person in rural places
46
because apparently there’s a lot of people who have been in the same situation in some ways. I think the cultural part,
the part where cultures clashes, and how to react in these situations; I think they could have focused more on that.
There was a section about cultural meetings and such. It could have been more stretched out.
I: When you came down there, did you feel like it [intercultural training] was lacking?
R: I have been a volunteer in the organisation I went to Sierra Leone with, and part of my tasks there was to prepare
volunteers for going to the jungle and living there as a group, so what my focus has been on. I realise that it didn’t get
as much attention in IBIS as it did in my other organisation. I noticed that before I left and put it in my evaluation of
the preparation days. Otherwise I thought the preparation was good, but it is difficult to be in Denmark and to get the
overall impression about what IBIS is working for and then get out of the plane and to be in the actual situation. It is
quite complex to imagine how things are and how you will react when you are there.
I: We like to also ask about how you found the internship and how the whole hiring process happened.
R: I was kind of waiting for IBIS’s internship advert because I was one of the fund-raisers for IBIS before I left, so I knew
the organisation quite well. I didn’t know anything about Liberia before I left besides reading in books and such. I had
a very good impression with internships with IBIS from both my studies and I liked my job at IBIS and the people there,
so I applied for the internship. I think that was in March and then I was invited for the interview in April. Then we had
the interview and then I was called by my supervisor in Liberia, a Danish woman, to have a small interview between
her and me.
I: So she [your supervisor] was not there during your original interview?
R: No, the first interview was between the internship coordinator and the education something in IBIS, with
experience from Liberia. I think they collected three of us applicants and then we were interviewed by this
programme director from Liberia. Then she made the final decision after the second interview. I think it took maybe a
week between the first and second interview and then a couple of days before I got the answer, and then I had some
days to make my decision.
I: Let’s talk a little more about the work you did when you were there and the organisational dynamics within IBIS. Let’s
start with talking about your level of communication within the organisation. What was the extend of communication
within IBIS both looking at the country office, and maybe also head office?
R: I think the first days, or the first week I spent in Liberia I spent in another town where my supervisor was living and
working. It’s the biggest office in south east Liberia. The biggest IBIS office down there. [I spent the first week there]
To get sort of acquainted with the office down there and what my tasks would be. Then after a couple of days I went
along with my supervisor to Fish Town to have a meeting with the staff. Then she left later that day. I knew that she
would come back after two days or something on her way back. She went further on to Harper, one of the other
offices is placed in Harper. On her way back we could have lunch and talk about how things were going. That was
good, but already from the beginning when I went to Fish Town, I missed more communication with my supervisor.
But I think it was mostly the personal contact; the feeling I had was being left alone. I knew that would be the
situation; I knew I was going to be the only white person out there, but it would have been more comfortable with her
calling to ask how I was doing and what it was like. You know, to have someone to discuss these personal impressions
with. It’s a bit strange to be in the situation, and then it wasn’t until after a week before I realised that maybe this was
what I needed. But then I grabbed the phone and took some contact myself. Of course it was also a balance because I
was not sure about how our personal relationship should be, between me and my supervisor. There were a lot of very
big impressions during the first week, which were kind of heavy to absorb and very confusing at the same time. For
me personally, I would have preferred more contact. That is of course different from each person. I was quite
surprised that my supervisor had to go on leave for three weeks during my first month. Of course she has to have her
47
holiday but it was quite bad for me in my situation because I was not sure about where to stay. I could stay one week
at this guest house she put me in when we arrived together, but then I had to find out where to go afterwards. It’s not
easy: There are some small guest houses in Fish Town, but the standard is not very high and it’s not easy to find out
whether this is a safe place or whether it will work or not, before you try it out. I kind of needed some support in that
situation, but that was difficult because she was not there. She was the person closest to this place.
I: What happened about finding a place to stay?
R: She [the supervisor] was quite concerned about the situation. She told me that. I knew she was putting a lot of
effort into this but it was a very difficult situation, because the accommodation opportunities in Fish Town are so
limited. Then I went with her to Monrovia, the capital, when she went on holiday so I had the chance to do some
shopping for groceries and stuff. Then when I returned I tried to stay at a guest house which was not working. I then
contacted two other IBIS staff members from two different towns which were like a stand in for her while she was on
holiday. They responded immediately and wanted to help out in this situation. Then I went to Harper to visit another
[IBIS employee]. He was called an education advisor. He was a Dane too. He invited me to stay there for some time
and to see Harper, and you know, hang out and do my work from there. For the first month I had to prepare so it was
OK for me to stay down there and to do the interview guide. That was very kind of him, and I felt that I was taken care
of in some way. Then I came back and I switched to another guest house for some time and tried it out. Then I went
back to the first guest house. We got that organised. I got in touch with the owner, and begged to come back even
though they said no in the beginning, but we worked it out. Then after, I think, a month and a half or something, I
went back to the first guest house which worked quite well, except the generator was not working. The electricity
situation was not really good. All the time, there was something that was not really, you know. I didn’t really have the
base you know… It was kind of stressful to be living in a place and to know, “OK this is not going to last for the rest of
the time”, so I was always looking for something else.
I: Do you think that could have been improved on IBIS’s behalf?
R: I definitely think so. If I knew that I was going to stay here in this place the whole time, and I didn’t have to worry
about whether I could stay a week or two days or a month. IBIS knew that this was going to be a problem, or a
challenge, or that it could be a problem. That was quite unsatisfactory. In my view I think that we should have either
known whether I could stay in one place, have a more concrete plan, or… I think it’s too risky to take the chance or
you know, to take the risk of whether this could work or not in a place like Fish Town. I understand that it’s difficult to
find accommodation for every intern but it’s really a difficult situation for an intern when you don’t know the system
or the structures; when you don’t know who to ask and of course the local staff in Fish Town was very helpful and
they all had good intentions. It was kind of tough to discuss this issue of “what is good accommodation”. They didn’t
know for sure what it was I needed. If it was OK hat there was no bathroom or whether a house had to be fenced;
stuff like that. I found that it was not very easy to discuss standards with them because I knew the standards they
were living under, so I felt quite spoiled about the standards that would be comfortable for international people. No
international people lived in Fish Town for a longer time. I think it was too risky to send an intern out there for the first
time for a period like that without knowing exactly what the opportunities were.
I: That is exactly the kind of stuff we like to look into. I just wanted to ask you; on a day-to-day basis at the office, you
mentioned your supervisor was away on holiday, who would you normally correspond with when you had to
correspond with IBIS?
R: We sort of agreed that we should have a monthly meeting between me and my supervisor to go through the plan
and my research outline. I had a plan to work with. Of course I could call the two other education advisors in Harper
and in [town name], but I felt like I had to have another reason for calling. Somehow it was difficult because I didn’t
know the people. It felt kind of strange.
48
I: You mentioned calling the other advisors. Was that encouraged or was it initiated on your accord?
R: It was. I had a strange situation where there was one weekend where I went to [town name] and my supervisor
offered me accommodation at her place, which was very kind of her. She was not there. I don’t remember where she
was but she was out of town. I got the idea to call the other advisor and ask if we could go out for a drink or have
dinner or something. He didn’t answer my call. I really needed that he would have answered and said “sure, let’s go”.
It was a bit sad to keep calling him. I don’t think it was personal at all, but it was kind of a strange situation. I felt like
“OK then I will just sit here for myself”. The advisor from Harper was.. It actually surprised me a lot that the
international staff didn’t ask “how are you?”, “How are you doing?”, “how are you feeling?”. I don’t know whether
people have been there for too long to be interested in how you are doing or these personal things. It was on a
completely different level and that surprised me a lot and also disappointed me a bit.
I: You say the international staff, what do you mean by that?
R: The expats in general; with IBIS and other organisations. I got the impression that people didn’t want to get too
personal.
I: Why do you think that is?
R: That was a big question for me. I don’t know. I think maybe people have created a kind of… To protect oneself
because it is difficult. People find ways to handle the situation. Of course you could talk about that with the right
‘people person’. When I was in Harper there was quite a lot of expats. I went out with a couple of young expats who
had recently come down to Liberia, so we were kind of in the same situation; in new surroundings and so on. That was
a great relief; to talk with someone about the situation and realise that he had the same impression and also thought
it was difficult.
I: Let’s move on to something different now. Something we like to ask is; what happened when you came home? What
has been the level of contact with IBIS since you left Liberia?
R: Actually I forgot to mention that, during my critical period where I didn’t know where to stay, I contacted the
internship coordinator and she acted immediately, so I can’t complain at all about that. That was a great support and
very comforting that she was concerned about us finding out what to do. I made this decision to leave earlier than
planned because of different things, and then continue and finalise my studies in Denmark. When I came home, I think
I got an email after a couple of days from the internship coordinator. She invited me to an informal meeting with her
to talk about how things were and to make a plan for [the last period of time], she offered me an office at IBIS in
Copenhagen where I could finish the report if I wanted to. I had made a plan with my supervisor for when I had to
deliver things. It worked quite well I think. Then I handed in the study as planned and then I had to make this formal
evaluation for IBIS and for my supervisor, and the article for the home page and such. Then, when that was out of the
picture in January or something, the contact stopped in some way. I was told that we should have a formal evaluation
between me, the internship coordinator, and an education person in IBIS Copenhagen. I have not been to that yet. I
felt like I had the evaluation from that first meeting after I returned, but I haven’t had the formal one yet.
I: We know that at the introductory seminar that they have, there are former interns as well. Have you been invited or
contacted by former or current interns?
R: There was a girl who went to Liberia during the spring last year. She was at the seminar. We made contact and we
met here in Copenhagen before I met and actually also afterwards. I heard her experiences and such. It was very good
to talk one on one about personal experience and stuff. Then I’ve been in contact with the intern in Sierra Leone while
I was in Liberia as well as a guy who was in Ghana. We met here in Copenhagen spontaneously at a library. Then I was
contacted by two people who went with [an IBIS project called] “Læseraketten”. They went to Liberia for two weeks
49
or something. They asked me whether I could participate in a presentation to talk about the YEP programme. We did
that and it was good. They were only in Fish Town for two days so it was quite interesting to hear their impressions
and to see how they corresponded with my own impressions.
I: One question that we always ask in the end; I don’t know if you can answer it, but why do you think that IBIS has
interns?
R: That’s a very good question. I think there were some situations where I felt like I was doing a task for them so they
could make some money or it would be very expensive to hire a consultant to do this job. I know that’s not the only
reason why [IBIS has interns]. They have interns because it’s a great opportunity for both parts. As a student you have
theoretical knowledge about a topic and experience or knowledge about how to conduct research and at the same
time having the opportunity to teach students about how things are working in the field. That’s a very good idea. It
should be a win-win situation. I think it’s both because they want to learn and also because they want to give young
people opportunities to go out and practise.
I: I have one more question. You said you were a fund-raiser for IBIS before you went. Are you still active in IBIS?
R: No I’m not, because I’m doing my thesis right now, and I felt that it was time to concentrate on that. I also thought
that my time as a fund-raiser had come to an end and I wouldn’t have had the time to have other student activities
besides the thesis writing.
I: [To the second interviewer] Do you have any follow-up questions?
S: Did you meet with the intern that came after you?
R: Yes, but I’m not sure she’s the one who’s going. We have a friend in common, so that’s why we’ve talked about it. I
haven’t been contacted by the next intern and I know that they’re not going to send an intern to Fish Town again right
now. I know that they have applied for interns to Liberia but I don’t know if they have decided on who’s going.
S: Some of the interns with whom we spoke said that they were required to write a country guide. Were you requested
to do that?
R: Yes.
S: You said that you were unsure about what kind of personal relationship you should have with your supervisor. Did
you feel the same thing with the other employees at the office?
R: No, it was another case with my supervisor. She was supposed to be my personal supervisor, and then there was
another contact person for personal issues. The problem was that she came to Liberia a month later than me; her
contract started a month later and she was situated in the other end of the country, so it was a bit difficult. Of course
we could talk on the phone, and we did but it was a bit too late unfortunately. Actually that was cleared out from the
start. For me it, it would have been natural to have some kind of personal relationship after being invited to stay at
her house and stuff. Naturally we weren’t put in a personal situation but I wasn’t quite sure about our relationship.
I: I haven’t got any more questions, unless you have something you want to add?
R: I have the document you sent earlier, I will just go through it… I don’t think so.
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