I am posting a few thoughts on the SI Career Blog about my internship experience at the Columbia River Gorge Commission. I'll try to aggregate all of those posts into one post here at CiC when they are complete. Until then, you can find the posts there.

The DFE Proposal I submitted in the fall went forward, and I thought I would blog some of my experiences thus far.

Sara Naab has been an exceptional mentor. I would strongly recommend that anyone interested in learning more about thinking through information strategies in an international setting get in touch with her, even just to talk. Our weekly phone calls have been a real help this semester, even just to share information and struggles.

Freedom From Hunger

From the Freedom From Hunger website: "Founded in 1946, Freedom from Hunger is a nonprofit, international development organization that brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty." FFH is a training organization focusing on microcredit, health and food security. For more information, I would recommend their content management system at http://www.ffhtechnical.org.

Background

Please note the final version of this proposal: Tracking Social Performance Indicators.

With much help from alumnus Sara Naab, here is my DFE proposal. I'd like to do this as an independent study this winter, if possible. The organization is "Freedom From Hunger," a training organization focusing on microfinance, health and food security. They have also have a CMS up. Edit: I wonder how the public goods/public information work concepts map to FFH. Their mission is to build capacity in microfinance institutions. Micro loans aren't public goods. I guess you could argue that the knowledge FFH provides to institutions is a public good. ie. My using the knowledge to make my institution better doesn't stop you from using the same knowledge to make your institution better. And it's difficult to exclude people from benefiting from the knowledge ...Is that right? Knowledge is hard to fence in, and all of the recipients of loans are benefiting from the dispersal of best practices. (However, FFH is trying to make money by training people in those best practices, so there must be some barrier to using the knowledge.) If this works, then my proposed DFE fits into our Public Information Work scheme as "enhancing the internal operations of organizations that perform public work." It's an information input to public work.

Here's a cool internship for the right SI student:

The NEW Service Network (NSN) provides nonprofits access to tools and services for abstracting out back-office or support functions. The first program area for NSN is a GNU/Linux thin-client network product, which allows nonprofits to reduce the cost/complexity of their IT infrastructures and enables new styles of work, such as remote access or collaboration. Subsequent program areas may address accounting and fundraising, etc.

See the announcement or a PDF flyer, cross-posted to CIC bulletin board in 4th West Hall.

I can tell you a little bit about UMInDS (University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies) in general, but not much about this internship in particular.

Hi all -

Please find below information re: 4-12 month paid internships with Telecentre.org at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada. Under the terms of IDRC's charter and funding priorities, these are open to NATIONALS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (OR CANADIANS) ONLY (dual citizens would also be eligible). Note also that the posted start date of January 2007 is negotiable, and interested SI candidates could almost certainly negotiate a May start date to coincide with the Michigan summer break.

I am a CIC alum and currently work as the knowledge manager for a NGO in Davis, CA. We work in the fields of education and microfinance. I have several projects that SI students may be interested. These could be DFEs or summer internships. I may at some point be able to spin some of them into actual positions at some point. Here are some examples that I came up with off the top of my head.

1. Technical website usability, architecture and re-design: We have a 3 layer portal that serves as a digital library, an internal document repository and a collaboration space for teams. It was implemented very hastily with not a lot of consideration about the usability. I need help figuring out what needs to be done with it. The current site can be found at: http://www.ffhtechnical.org

From: members-bounces@afcn.org [mailto:members-bounces@afcn.org] On
Behalf Of Paul Hansen
Sent: October 11, 2006 8:55 PM
To: AFCN Members
Subject: [AFCN Members] CTC VISTA Project Now Accepting Applications

Hello AFCN Members,

I'm very pleased to announce that the CTC VISTA Project is currently accepting applications for VISTA positions that begin in JANUARY, 2007.

As promised, a report back from the Int'l Internship Panel held yesterday in the Mich. Union:

As part of the International Career Pathways series, (http://www.umich.edu/~icenter/swt/work/resources/ICP/index.html)a panel of 6 grad students spoke about their recent int'l internship experiences.

The names, internship orgs, and contact info of the grad students who worked with NGOs is listed below. The panelists welcome questions from others with similar interests.