Last week was the introduction to my internship, which went fairly smoothly. Apparently, at Unis-Cite, I will be working on several projects during the next two months.
After arriving, I started to work with Emilie, who along with another intern, will be coordinating the GJV, la Grand Journee de Volontairiat. In English, the Grand Day of Volunteering. Set up by Unis-Cite in the past few years, there are two goals. First, to not only build on the sense of place with projects that the “equipes” or teams, do, but to directly involve themselves with finding projects that directly involve what they are learning. For example, after explaining to me this gigantic project to help organize, we did a site visit. It was at a Center d’Animation (community center for children’s classes and such…like a Park District), where the people were organizing a project to record the stories and the histories of people “sans papiers,” or what Americans might call illegal immigrants. Not only do they work on the project, but then they set up a day where they can help volunteer to do something with another NGO to help these people.
That is the second purpose of the day. Not only does it involve the volunteers, but organizations that already work with these issues. Knowing them and getting involved is paramount, since it is my job to organize and discover their structure to see what is best suited to attract more volunteers to the certain projects from outside our organization. So, I have to come up with a good form or something to pass out or mail to these organizations to remind them that we are doing this and attract other people to it.
Realizing this took a bit, since the indirect and implicit nature of French administration made my role a bit fuzzy. Monday, after meeting most of the volunteers from the city of Paris, I met with Bertrand, my boss, as well as the communications director and Emilie. It felt more like an inquisition and less like a meeting, because he wanted to know what I knew. After sweating a bit and giving a long explanation in French which seemed partially right, we moved on to how we were going to act. It was a bit intense, and after an hour (at 7:30 pm), we emerged and I promptly went home.
The organization seems to be doing a lot of good in the community, not just by its actions, but by bringing lots of people together. What makes me nervous is my huge role, and if I can get everything accomplished that they need me to. Hopefully, that answer is yes, and I think I will be working as hard as possible not to let some French people down. I already feel bad for going to Amsterdam this weekend and missing a day, so I’m making it up this week with three days of work instead. As a matter of fact, I need to go and get lunch beforehand.
