I am Andrew Kalule, a final year student at Diaconia University of Applied Science, studying Social Services. As a requirement, every student must undergo a practical placement at the end of every academic year as a way of applying theory in practice.
In accordance with this requirement, I did my final internship at Think Africa, a nonprofit organization that provides a platform for African diaspora in Finland. Think Africa enables individuals to share developmental ideas for individual and group empowerment.
I got to know about Think Africa from Facebook events in Helsinki. The objectives of Think Africa prompted me to contact the Chairperson for an internship opportunity. Fortunately, I was invited to meet other Think Africa members at their bi-weekly Hub meetup, at which the Chairperson introduced the idea for an internship project that at the time aligned with my thesis idea.
I wanted my placement to facilitate and advance my project management skills and help me apply theories learnt in helping communities. Another desire of mine was to expand my professional and social networks.
During my practical placement at Think Africa, I conducted and managed a physical and mental wellbeing project in collaboration with two of my study colleagues. The wellbeing mainly targeted international students and families of an African background.
My main role was to create marketing materials for the project; i.e. designing digital flyers and banners for distribution on Think Africa’s social media channels. As a result, my skills in digital content creation was improved significantly and proved beneficial in attracting participants to the wellbeing events.
Reaching the target audience during a short term project was not as easy as envisioned in the beginning of the planning process. This challenge evoked a constant need for improving my visual designs development skills and making them more engaging, strategic and focusing them on the right search engines.
As a social services student, I looked for an organization that would recognize my personal skills and utilize them to enhance my professional development and personal learning path.
On the basis of my three month experience, I would gladly recommend Think Africa to any student with the mindset of utilizing personal skills to impact their professional career. I consider Think Africa as a supportive organization suitable for community development and/ or social service internship.
What I enjoyed most and am thankful for throughout my internship and in the wake of its aftermath is the active support received from my colleagues and our supervisors at Think Africa; particularly our head supervisor, the Chairperson, with whom we interacted weekly.
Experiences of the supervisors in project management, the scope of their network, and understanding of community needs helped us succeed in organising four four successful wellbeing related events. In a nutshell, these exchanges strengthened us and facilitated the realization of our internship into a thesis project.
The events we organised were focused on increasing parent’s knowledge of the Finnish education system and were implemented in collaboration with the Moniheli “Omapolku” project that aimed at supporting students through mental wellbeing and providing housing related information as well as entrepreneurship skills for immigrants.
I am a beneficiary of new networks and I understand the different challenges and successes experienced by immigrants in Finland. I am certain that this has contributed greatly to the desired impact I long for in my career in community development. Taking part in this project was a memorable experience of daily learning, professionally and socially. The internship project inspired me to choose a community development project thesis for my final dissertation.
Written by:
Andew Kalule, Final year student at Diaconia University of Applied Science, Social Services.
