Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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4 OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2 AUW Students Win Internships at Home and Abroad Internships enhance a university education by providing real-world experiences. AUW encourages its students to put to work what they have learned in the classroom by completing three internships before graduation—in the not-for-profit, for-profit, and entrepreneurial sectors. This year, AUW students enthusiastically embraced the task of pursuing internships. The range of ways they spent the summer speaks not only to the diversity of their interests, but to the considerable reach of their talents. Some students sought service-oriented positions with local NGOs or with charitable organizations in their home countries, while others worked in the offices of large global corporations and banks, and still others won coveted positions in international conferences. Students who remained in Bangladesh could choose from various opportunities. Two local NGOs provided internships to nearly 20 AUW students from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Pakistan in a range of areas including the promotion of HIV/AIDs awareness, protecting the rights of sex workers, and microfinancing and economic development. Save the Children Australia (Bangladesh), an NGO that seeks to give children a greater voice in issues of governance and to empower them in the context of their communities, enlisted a pair of AUW students to conduct research for the “Listen to Children’s Voices” project and to participate in the planning of a Child Parliament. Students also took part in internships in public health and medical informatics with Oasis Cure (Bangladesh), which aided in the establishment of a clinic and hospital in a village located outside of Chittagong. On campus, a group of AUW students contributed to the iStep project under the purview of Carnegie Mellon University’s (Pennsylvania, US) TechBridgeWorld research group. TechBridgeWorld launched iSTEP (innovative Student Technology ExPerience) as a platform to provide Carnegie Mellon students with the opportunity to formulate solutions to real-world problems on the ground. The iSTEP program subsequently sent a five-member team to Chittagong to work with AUW students on a range of projects, including the creation and evaluation of culturally relevant educational technology and games designed to enhance English literacy, and the customization and enhancement of Braille Writing Tutor technology in order to improve the availability of educational resources to visually impaired students in Bangladesh. (TechBridgeWorld kept a blog about their experience in Bangladesh that can be accessed at http://istep2010.techbridgeworld.org/.) Other students returned to their native countries to work with local NGOs. A group of AUW students from Nepal became involved with CCS Italy, an NGO that promotes development projects in health and education in Nepal; they completed their internships under the joint supervision of the executive director of the organization and AUW’s country coordinator. A group of AUW students from Cambodia worked with a local NGO on a community project focused on helping children. Many AUW students also sought positions abroad that met their interests. Marvah Shakib, an Access Academy student from Afghanistan, started keeping an eye out earlier this year for opportunities associated with Empower Peace, a worldwide educational and leadership program created in the aftermath of 9/11 to promote understanding “We believe that we will acquire a respectable place in the world, not through flashy certificates, glamour or glitter, but through our hard work, commitment, and dedication.” NAWRA MEHRIN between the Muslim and American worlds. When she discovered that Empower Peace was hosting a conference in Boston, Massachusetts, she leapt at the opportunity. She was one of 110 applicants selected from a pool of 1,200, and out of this group, one of the top 10 applicants. She was awarded a full scholarship. Aptly named “Women2Women,” the conference offered female students from the United States and from 28 countries around the world the opportunity to explore topics such as cultural leadership, government and public service, and media technology and media literacy. Marvah returned to Afghanistan with a rejuvenated commitment to empower women and an “action plan” to host a conference of her own, with the goal of counseling high school aged women in Afghanistan on the importance of completing their educations despite the pervasive societal pressure to marry. “Marriage is a part of life but education is much more important. Women are the main point of a society; if the women are educated, they can educate their children,” she says. Student Azmina Karim, a native of Bangladesh who is committed to supporting disabled children in her country, was thrilled to discover The Help Group, a leading non-profit located in Los Angeles, California, that serves “children with special needs related to autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, ADHD, mental retardation, abuse and emotional problems.” 1 She applied for a position as an intern and subsequently spent her summer in the United States expanding upon her prior volunteer experiences.
STUDENT INTERNSHIPS 5 Students aspiring toward a career in finance will be excited to hear that worldrenowned financial services firm UBS will sponsor the internships of two to three AUW students at their Hong Kong branch in the summer of 2011. The company will provide students with a monthly stipend and cover all costs associated with the ten-week program, including airfare and accommodation. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has similarly committed to provide internships to AUW students. Mowmita Basak Mow, an undergraduate student from Bangladesh, also traveled to the United States to take part in an exchange program sponsored by the U.S Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program, hosted by the University of Virginia’s politics department, offered 20 students from India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh the opportunity to study new media and to learn about its impact on civic engagement, politics, and journalism, while also acquiring valuable leadership skills. Academics, journalists, and politicians delivered “It was my honor and privilege to be a part of this amazing multinational company. Their work ethic definitely reflects what they believe in terms of their mission statements and mottos.… The 12 weeks I spent at HSBC created a big impact on my life.” lectures on a range of topics, including how to be a responsible leader in a democratic state, the changing face of media, and the role of emerging media technologies in political campaigns and elections. Mowmita comments, “I feel myself very lucky to attend such an honorable program, and learn about democracy in the birthplace of one of the most powerful democracies—the United States.” In addition, program participants were given the opportunity to take part in their own new media project. Mowmita, whose dedication to community service runs deep, opted to set up a blog that could serve as an open forum for youths to discuss the different ways they could serve their communities. Program participants were also encouraged to engage in community service activities; Mowmita subsequently traveled to Charlottesville, North Carolina, every week to work at a home for the elderly and at a community center for the homeless. AUW students wishing to fulfill their for-profit internship requirement could turn to employers such as Tata Group, a multinational conglomerate of companies involved in several business fields that offered AUW students internships in different parts of India in sectors including hotel management and information technology; or Standard Chartered Bank, which boasts over 75,000 employees worldwide and franchises in Asia, FARAH IQBAL Africa, and the Middle East, and provided internships to students in Chittagong; or to a myriad of other employers such as HSBC Bank, Bank Asia, Dutch Bangla, and the World Bank Bangladesh. Farah Iqbal, a student from Bangladesh who interned at HSBC in Chittagong, wrote of her experience: “It was my honor and privilege to be a part of this amazing multinational company. Their work ethic definitely reflects what they believe in terms of their mission statements and mottos.… The 12 weeks I spent at HSBC created a big impact on my life.” Nawra Mehrin, also a native of Bangladesh, spent her summer pursuing her interest in development economics at the World Bank offices in Dhaka, where she worked closely with the South Asia Poverty and Finance team on a report titled, “Ready-Made Garments and the Importance of Compliance Issues in Bangladesh.” In addition, she attended conferences, workshops, and seminars that she believes will better prepare her for her future career. “One of the take-away messages that I bring back to the AUW community this summer is, ‘Supply creates its own demand,’” she says. “At primary glance, this statement might just sound like something extracted from a business magazine, but when analyzed deeply, these words are quite [relevant] to the notion of our newly born institution. We are being prepared for something new, something different, something unique … We believe that we will acquire a respectable place in the world, not through flashy certificates, glamour or glitter, but through our hard work, commitment, and dedication.” 1 ”About Us.” http://www.thehelpgroup.org/about.htm. Accessed 13 August 2010. OPPOSITE (left): AUW students with members of Carnegie Mellon’s iSTEP team in Chittagong. OPPOSITE (right): Three AUW students work on an iSTEP project. BELOW (left): An AUW student conducts a survey in a village. BELOW (right): Mr. Syamal Gupta, recently retired Chairman of Tata International and now a Senior Advisor to the Chairman of Tata, with AUW students in India. Mr. Gupta announced that Tata internships were available to AUW students when visiting the University in April 2010.
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Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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