Today was a busy day! I officially started at Save the Children and spent most of the morning reading executive summaries of STC's programs in Minya. Last week I met with Patrick Crump, the STC country director for Egypt, as well as Amira and Amina, with whom I will be working closely. I have two major responsibilities. First, in the Information department, I will be helping with communication with sponsors. STC operates with funding from both one-to-one sponsors (a person/family 'adopts' a child and pays directly for them) and ambassador sponsors (where many people sponsor one child). There is a professional part of STC that does the letter writing with the children, but I will be working on the mass mailings that go out to ambassador sponsors and other NGO workers, diplomats, and important figures in the Middle Eastern development community.
For the Communications department, I will be doing some of the PR side of it - the flashy brochures and booklets that also get sent out to sponsors as well as people within the international development community and potential sponsors. This includes the pictures, and collecting the information. Some of the information comes from the finance department, but I will have the opportunity to go out into the field and do some case study work - looking at a specific child or family, taking information their conditions prior to the implementation of a certain program, how a certain program positively influenced their life or did nothing (although that's not something that we would write about in a PR publication!), and then talk about the changes and interview the child or family to get their personal account of the experience.
STC also just opened a completely new program in a new location! Minya has had alot of positive change over the last 20 years, and so they've taken on a completely new area in Assuit, about an hour and a half further south than Minya. Patrick said there will be alot of opportunities for me to do case studies there, and mentioned that the last intern was able to accompany them to Minya and yesterday went with them to visit children's clinics in Cairo. I am really excited, and it seems that if I stay motivated and ask questions I will have alot of great opportunities! It seems to be a great time to be at STC because it is the 75th anniversary of STC globally and the 25th anniversary of STC operations in Egypt, and many events and new programs are happening to celebrate those achivements.
Tonight, I had dinner with Stephen Hanchey, the country director for AMIDEAST, after being invited along by Deena Shakir, a senior at Harvard here researching the impact of western NGOs on education reform in Egypt (and who I met during my study abroad - what a great group of friends!). We ate at La Bodega on 26th of July and had great conversations about Egypt, its shortcomings and its potentials. All in all, a great night with great people!
