Archive for October 2009 – Page 4

Top 10 Tips for Communicating With Our Office

This entry is a compilation of our “Top 10″ list for you to consider when communicating with our office, searching for information, and applying.  10 entries were posted and this entry serves as a single place where you can access all of them in one place.

My hope is that this information will allow you to find answers to your questions as quickly as possible, receive timely responses from our office, and avoid delays.

Click on the individual 1-10 listings to be directed to the original posts that have all of the details.

Number 1 – Use the same email address when communicating with our office and when applying.

Number 2 – Avoid Creating a Duplicate Online Application.

Number 3 – Avoid copying several parties on the same email and avoid long emails.

Number 4 – Thoroughly review our FAQ Page.

Number 5 – When leaving a voice mail message speak slowly, clearly, and state your telephone number twice.

Number 6 – If you must mail something to our office, use a private mail courier.

Number 7 – Check out our student, alumni, faculty, staff interview page.

Number 8 – Familiarize Yourself with Expenses and Start searching for fellowhips/grants as soon as possible.

Number 9 – Attend an information session or recruitment event.

Number 10 – Subscribe to this blog!

What I Did This Summer: Entry #4

Sandhya Chari is a second year MPA student concentrating in Economic and Political Development.  I asked her to share about her summer internship and she wrote the following and sent along the pictures as well.

____________________________________

This summer I spent 5 weeks interning with ACCESS Development Services in New Delhi and Jaipur, India. After taking a micro-enterprise development course last spring, I was inspired to intern in livelihoods and enterprise development in South Asia. ACCESS, though started as a microfinance organization, found that livelihoods work was a crucial partner to microfinance, and so has devoted half of its efforts to small business development. It uses various methods to help empower the workers and help them become more profitable.

Aug 2009 067

My project was to understand the working conditions of the labor artisans making stone jewelry in Jaipur. In order to understand these conditions, I had to develop a questionnaire and conduct over fifty interviews in the urban slums of Jaipur.  This was particularly challenging because I had to ask the questions in Hindi, a language which I am just beginning to study. After conducting the interviews, I learned that the workers in this sector are severely exploited. They make an average of one to two dollars per day and work with very toxic and dangerous chemicals and equipment with no protection. They have little access to social services such as insurance, and there is a great deal of child labor.

Aug 2009 028

Finally, their work requires the use of very expensive machinery, so they experience added financial hardship to buy or rent their machines. I hope the final report containing these findings is useful in developing informed interventions to help these workers grow from informal, exploited laborers, to small enterprise owners.

Aug 2009 018

I was very happy with this internship because not only did it allow me to see the big picture of the project at a high level, it also gave me an opportunity to work at the field level, getting a grasp for what is really happening on the ground. I believe that this internship has significantly improved my SIPA experience, because I am now able to further contextualize my coursework, and I also know what areas I need to take classes in  based on what I didn’t know in the field.

Aug 2009 044

"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."

—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs

Boiler Image