Internships student's experiences

Carlotta Rivolta. During my second year, I took part in the national call MAECI-CRUI-MUR, which allowed me to live and work for three months in New Zealand. This internship was such an enriching opportunity that let me witness the inner workings of an Embassy on the other side of the planet! New Zealand is an astounding country whose beauty has given me a newfound respect for nature and its preservation.

As per the internship, I greatly appreciated the working environment of the Embassy – I was immediately welcomed and treated as a peer and I was allowed to join several political meetings with other Embassies, High Commissions, and the EU Delegation in New Zealand.

New Zealand may not seem as interesting as other destinations, but I gained a new perspective on social issues in a multicultural landscape and I discovered new lifestyles and more environmentally-conscious ways of looking at the world.

And I got over my fear of flying!

Giulia Bortino. The internship in Jerusalem has been a unique experience. First of all, regarding the political context, living in an occupied territory has aroused in me strong feelings. Moreover, since I have been mainly employed in the political affairs section of the Consulate, I had the chance to take part in innumerable political and diplomatic meetings and reports’ presentations held by local NGOs. Participation to such events entailed to commute to Palestine regularly – only once to the Gaza Strip.

In addition, this experience has been extraordinarily enriching thanks to the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation’s projects on the field: I had the chance to discover them and to participate to monitoring activities. I strongly recommend Jerusalem as a destination for this internship, in order to gain experience from a complex political situation on the ground that will multiply your work and engagement in the Consulate’s daily work.

My name is Cristina Calvano and I graduated with a master's degree in International Cooperation on Human Rights and Intercultural Heritage with the curriculum in Protection of Human rights and International Cooperation. My master's thesis was entitled: Coronavirus and geographical differences: inequality kills. During my studies, I had the chance to do two internships and they were unique occasions for me to gain knowledge and improve my skills.

During the first semester, I carried out the curricular internship at the European Policies Office of the Municipality of Ravenna. My duties referred to the coordination of the volunteers of two projects in the field of civic participation, the dissemination of the definition of human rights and the preparation of the events related to the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition, I had the opportunity to participate in meetings aimed at planning European projects of which the European Policies Office is Lead partner.

From my point of view, the experience was absolutely positive. I was able to quickly fit into the working environment thanks to the availability and kindness of the people with whom I collaborated during the period of internship.

While in the second semester, I carried out the second internship in a flexible manner for the Permanent Mission of Italy to the International Organizations in Geneva. I have supported human rights staff in various activities, providing support. The internship program at the Permanent Mission of Italy has allowed me to carry out activities such as research for human rights issues, the preparation of documents and analytical reports, participation in video conferences and virtual meetings.

In addition, I had the opportunity to attend meetings of the EU Delegation and with representatives from other Delegations and Secretariats of the International Organisations concerned, and therefore specifically the tasks I held were related to the management of multilateral relations and EU-wide. During the three months of training, I was able to attend various conferences at the United Nations. This highly professional internship also gave me the opportunity to acquire relevant data and information for my final dissertation on the impact of COVID-19 on inequalities in the world.

I think that the possibility of doing internships during university careers is fundamental. I believe that the education and training acquired during my university studies have found opportunities to maximise the solid theoretical background that undoubtedly the University of Bologna and the Professors provide through the internship experience.

Carrying out high-quality internships has been certainly a way to complete that training, both practical and theoretical, which accompanies our professional and personal growth.

Once again, I thank you Alma Mater for giving me these possibilities that will remain forever imprinted in my heart and mind. So, don’t miss the opportunity to do an internship during your second year master’s degree!

Hello everyone, my name is Daniela Desantis and I am a second year I-CONTACT student. In July and August of 2022, I had the opportunity to do my curricular internship in Greece at the Community Centre, a social and support space for migrants in the Corinth refugee camp.
Over the course of these two months, I worked in a team that helped provide food, legal, medical and psychological support (I assisted with the coordination of a project with Doctors Without Borders!), along with teaching English in the school. Most of all, however, this experience allowed me to engage firsthand with the migration stories of many different people. We shared together moments of laughter and serenity, but also of sadness and worry. Each of the people I have met on this journey has taught me so much.
One of the most important aspects of this internship for me was the Social Art for Women project that I designed with my partner Chiara Macciò and that we developed with the women in the camp. Through weekly art workshops, we have built a safe space for a lot of women where they could experience new things, tell their stories, gather together, or even just hang out for a couple of hours. People who outside our classroom would not have even said hello to each other, during Social Art collaborated together, cheered for each other and celebrated their being women, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives.
At the end of our journey, Chiara and I curated an exhibition of our artists: The Women Are Present.
With their consent, we left some works in the Community Center, so that every migrant woman who will be there will know that that is a safe place for her, where she can meet solidarity and support.

My name is Mathilde Knöfel, I'm Italian-German, and I plan to graduate by summer 2022. During my studies of I-CONTACT I tried to take every chance to undertake experiences abroad, as this is a great opportunity offered by the University though the Erasmus+ program and the scholarship for writing the final dissertation abroad of the Ravenna campus, which are both especially accessible to I-CONTACT students. These two calls brought me to Athens in 2021 and to Aarhus (Denmark) in 2022.

In Athens I worked for EKO Greece, a local NGO specialized in youth empowerment. The organisation has a cooperation with UNIBO, so I was able to find it through the internship portal of Studenti Online. It was an international, young and dynamic team divided into different departments. I worked for the department of European Key Action projects and helped organising and carrying out projects that can last from 2 weeks up to multiple years. Topics of the youth projects ranged from climate change to media literacy. It was a great experience to dive into the world of European projects and the work of small NGOs. In the Centre for Environmental Humanities at Aarhus University I co-organised an international academic conference on Global Environmental Justice and assisted in all the steps of the organisation including communication with participants, drafting of the schedule, arranging rooms and caterings and chairing a panel during the conference.

Both experiences were extremely useful for my personal and professional growth, but I also had a lot of fun and connected with extremely interesting people. I believe that studying I-CONTACT along with carrying out different internships allows the perfect match to find the suiting place in the world after studies! Tipp: follow your interests and passions in choosing your field of work.

My name is Dmytro Mamayev, I'm from Ukraine and I'm already a graduate student of the I-CONTACT Programme. I would like to share with you briefly my Erasmus+ traineeship that I’ve obtained due to the status of being an I-CONTACT student, in particular:) I did a 3 months internship at the international enterprise 'Efektas Group' in Lithuania (Kaunas city). Efektas has branches of activity in Milan and Barcelona, though headquarters are in Kaunas.

Among my main obligations were working on the directions of education and business development projects. From this we can make an assumption that I was undertaking my commitments as a project management intern over there... And that’s true!  Apart from precise work on the various types of projects, I was involved in negotiating processes with partners from Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Greece regarding further horizons of possible collaboration.

I’ve got a decent amount of things in terms of personal, professional development while unfolding my soft skills as well.  Overall, it was quite a beneficial period of my life, I do keep working with this company until nowadays, the environment there is completely international (Lithuania, Nigeria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Chile, India) - just some of the countries of origin of our members.

My suggestion to you - try to use as many chances as possible while you do an MA.  International experiences will assist any of You in your future professional career. Guarantee - 300%!

Hi everyone, my name is Ülker Basak and I am from Turkey. Currently, I am in my second year at ICONTACT Programme. I have completed my curricular internship in Comune di Ravenna (Municipality of Ravenna), European Policies office. The office exercises the administrative functions attributed by the laws of the State and Emilia Romagna Region as well as implementing cooperation policies and projects with other municipalities and public bodies. During my internship, I worked on several projects about European Integration as well as human rights. Not only was I able to attend seminars and activities there, but I was also able to use my communication and researching skills. As a result, my knowledge about European Union and community issues deepened vastly. This Internship also contributed to my achievement of long-term goals, because I would like to pursue a career in the same field. As a result, I felt much more confident while I spoke Italian as well as I demonstrated good communication, negotiation, and management skills.

Doing an internship in the European Policies Office of the Municipality of Ravenna was a unique experience and I would highly recommend it to everyone!

Atakan Gürbüz. During the first semester of my second year in I-CONTACT, I had an amazing opportunity to carry out an internship at the immigration office of the Municipality of Ravenna between October – December 2020. This experience has been very fruitful in so many terms, by allowing me to advance my skills both theoretically and practically.

The services of the immigration office ranged from promoting the social inclusion and autonomy of immigrant citizens; to the services that help the immigrants and foreigners -who come to Italy for work, study, etc. reasons- with their applications for residence permits, citizenship, and other necessary bureaucratic affairs. I was trained on the SIPROIMI project, whose objectives are reception, protection, and integration of asylum seekers, refugees, and holders of humanitarian protection.

At the beginning of, and also throughout my internship, I was so lucky to have an amazing group of workers who made my experience even more remarkable as it was a nice atmosphere to work in. Thanks to the help I got, I was easily able to participate more practically within the office by taking responsibilities for carrying out the residence permit applications of foreigners, such as of the students like me, on the “Portale Immigrazione”; and providing people online help with their questions and requests regarding the application processes and requirements. Although the main language of the office was Italian, I was still able to adapt to the flow of the office and the tasks that I was responsible for in less than two weeks. Not only did this help me to advance my responsibility and adaptability skills, but it also helped me to improve my communication skills, especially in a new language.

Carrying out an internship during the Covid pandemic was not as bad as I would have imagined it, in fact, on the contrary, it was pretty active for me since I had so many opportunities in assisting the operators and representatives of the immigration office with their tasks. Being under new circumstances and trying to manage the tasks under such circumstances, in a team, strengthen my teamwork skills as well as problem-solving skills from so many perspectives.

Overall, this internship made me gain and reinforce multiple skills that will help me to consolidate my career path. But there is more to it than this. This internship experience also made me able to understand how the Italian migration and asylum system function, and made me able to better grasp the difficulties and challenges arising from the regulations and rules of the Legislative Decree. It also helped me to analyze what kind of changes and/or modifications are needed for a much better functioning migration and asylum system.

I am very thankful for Unibo for having provided such an opportunity, and for Comune di Ravenna for warmly accepting me within their team.

Elena Bignardi. During my internship at the Italian Cultural Institute of Marseille I learned a lot about the internal dynamics of the organization. The activities varied day to day and included the establishment of contacts with institutions and representatives of the cultural world favoring the promotion of Italian culture and realities; support for cultural events and initiatives; promotion of the Italian language; collaboration with Italian artists in Marseille; and economic support for historical and cultural initiatives concerning Italy.

I had an opportunity to learn about the organizational and bureaucratic matters behind cultural events: from directly contacting the artists or their managers to the understanding of the galleries, organizations, and artists with whom to begin short and long-term collaborations; to economic and administrative organization of the transfers, the food, and the accommodation for the artists collaborating with the Cultural Institute.

I was also involved in the management of the library and the video archive of the Cultural Institute, assisted with setting up shows and exhibitions and with the online sponsorship of the events. Online management included the use of Italian Cultural Institute social networks to create online events and the updating of the website of the Institute.

The most important events, in which I had the opportunity to participate, were the collaboration between Italian Cultural Institute, Goethe Institute, and Spanish Consulate to organize a film festival of the pictures selected for the 2020 edition of the European Parliament’s LUX price; the project within the framework of Les Parallèles du Sud on the colonial history of the Italian Cultural Institute in Marseille; and the inauguration of the exhibition of the illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti and his feature film ‘The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily’ (La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia).

These three months were enriching both from a professional and personal point of view. I was immediately included in the dynamics of the Cultural Institute and learned to independently perform a variety of tasks. I believe that this experience was perfectly aligned with my academic path and that it allowed me to find new opportunities for my future work position.

Hi! I’m Thomas Reimer from Canada and I’ve been fortunate to have completed two different internships during this master's degree -  I’m so grateful for the guidance and support that the IContact team and professors have given me throughout the process.

The first internship was through Unibo’s ‘Field Work Programme’ and I was awarded a grant to work with an Italian NGO in the African Kingdom of Eswatini with projects focused on human rights and climate change adaptation. The most memorable part of this experience was connecting with and learning from the inspiring individuals who are leading civil society organizations across the country. Along with this, it was a tremendously valuable experience for me for two other reasons. First, I gained exposure to the world of project management in international cooperation and the (many) challenges that are a part of it. Second, I received mentorship from professionals with decades of experience who generously shared their knowledge with me and helped me understand the trends and career trajectory of this field of work.

The second internship was with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Since I completed this internship at the end of my degree, it gave me a chance to actively apply the knowledge gained in my coursework towards shaping real-world policy. Along with contributing to inequality focused research papers and policy briefs, I had the opportunity to participate in high-level forums and intimately experience the diplomacy involved in international cooperation.

My advice to students is simple - go for it!

Cristina's experience