WESLEY DEPARTS TANZANIA- INTERN REFLECTION

​With my time in Tanzania having come to an end a few days ago now, I've had the chance to really reflect and process the experience, and am now able to truly appreciate how rewarding it was.

Looking back on it, I'm so grateful to everyone on the team for entrusting me with the level of responsibility I had. I felt like more than just an intern, but rather, I felt like an integral part of the team. With Sasamani being such a young and dynamic organization with so many exciting projects constantly in the works, there was so much work to be done across all fronts, and I think it's truly special that I was able to contribute to so many different areas. Being involved with everything from event planning to social media marketing to fundraising kept me on my toes and kept my days exciting. No two days across the 8 weeks were alike.

Because my experience was so diverse, I know that having something like my time at Sasamani under my belt will be useful to have going forward in my professional career regardless of what my next steps are. Some of the things I was involved in were tasks that aren’t specific to the operations of an NGO. For instance, I played a big role in helping the team transition from physical documents and locally stored files to a cloud storage system via Google Drive.

Going forward, it'll be useful for the team to all be accessing the same live versions of files so everyone can quite literally be on the same page. I created a sponsor and student information database that will be stored on the Team Drive and worked with Gladness and Elias to familiarize them with Google Drive and Google Suite.

In addition to the contributions I made, being with Sasamani did a lot for my understanding of the issues of poverty and economic development. The burning questions that have floated around the back of my mind most of my academic career revolve around how we can empower people to improve their economic situations. But I think that one thing my experience this summer has shown me is that, until now, I had a somewhat myopic view of how this can be achieved. I've learned that it's not as black and white as I once thought it to be. There are a million and one factors that combine to create the issue we know to be global poverty. Working with Gladness on the education initiatives cemented this idea in my mind. Understanding the realities that our sponsored students live every day has been so eye-opening.

​What's more, breaking out of my comfort zone a bit as I contributed to these different projects, going as far as teaching classes (something I never thought I'd do in a million years), has been quite rewarding. So not only did I expand my thinking, but I also got to try some new things, and I really can say I enjoyed it.

​A huge Thank You to Andy and everyone on Team Sasamani for having me and making my summer so enriching. I look forward to seeing all of the great work you all do going forward and I wish you nothing but the best!