My first "real" assignment was to translate a 7 page informational paper from French to English. Now, this may sound quite easy but the problem that I had was that I had no clue what most of it meant. I wasn't exposed to any official documents related to rights and even more educational rights.
It turned out pretty well and my boss was happy of my work.
My second assignment was to translate another 7 page paper from French to English to and it went even better than the first one. It was then published to the official web page where anyone could access to it. I felt quite proud of my work.
The third assignment that I received this week was to make a summary of a 20 page paper regarding the yearly convention the U.N. has regarding civil rights. I had to explain what was gonna happen and include the involvement of our organization explaining well our intentions and goals.
This as well was published on OIDEL's site.
Fortunately I didn't just stay in an office translating reports. I was able to attend at a convention where several NGOs (non-governmental organization) met up and talked about what they were doing prior to the U.N. convention. The meeting was kind of boring but at the end of the meeting I was rewarded with compliments from an NGO who was the receiver of the first translation that I made. He was very happy of my work and said that I did an excellent job. This made me really happy and I actually felt that my work was worth something.
I was also able to attend to a seminar regarding the usage of social media, especially with Twitter. I was amazed on how good the room looked. I felt like I was in a movie!
This seminar was featured by Matthias Lüfkens, a social media expert and author of Twiplomacy, serving with Burson-Marsteller and the World Economic Forum. I was able to talk to him after the meeting and ask him a few questions that I had.
Finally, I was taken around Geneva to visit different locations that would be useful to me during the month of my internship. As we went around we went to another organization's building to hand in some paperwork. The organization is called ADF International, and the office was really nice. Again, I felt like I was in a movie. We me with Rubén Navarro, a Human Rights Lawyer-Director of UN Advocacy for NGO.
ADF International is present at the United Nations to serve and assist member states that are working tirelessly for the protection of religious freedom, sanctity of life, and marriage and family throughout the world.
Their organization touched me, the passion and motivation of Rubén Navarro is incredible and inspiring. I have seen people work for these rights, but not to an international level. Their fearlessness to talk about this subject around the world is incredible and encouraging.
To sum up my first week as an intern at OIDEL, I'd say that I'm ecstatically happy to be part part of this movement, to be able to meet new people whom can make huge differences in people's lives, but most importantly, to feel like I can make a difference.
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