Hi everyone!

I hope you have all been keeping well with university so far! I'm currently writing this blog post in the library of the University of Sydney, as I just started my exchange here a few weeks ago.
Due to some special circumstances, I actually wanted to complete my LiA during the winter holiday instead of during summer. And fortunately, because the Australian academic year starts later than Ireland, I had sufficient time to do so as well. Thus why I am writing this reflection in March!

The NGO I interned with in question is called 'Culture Goes Europe', an Erfurt-based, mainly migrant-led organisation that supports various social impact projects through EU funding programs. It was an NGO that perfectly aligned with my passion in social impact enterprises, and an amazing opportunity to gain real, hands-on experience with project management, social impact, and of course leadership.

Firstly, there's a fairly large range of projects that the organisation supports. One project I was heavily involved with was called 'Critical Reflection Academy', a project focussing on providing non-formal, freelance educators a framework to practice the recently popularised technique of critical reflection, as well as provide them a robust support network. For the project's inaugural training camp in Weimar, I was granted the opportunity to actually fly over and participate in it with all the educators (during exam week 💀)! It was a super profound learning experience for me, and a pleasure to interact with teachers, youth workers, and educators from a set of amazingly diverse backgrounds. During another activity, I was even able to contribute to the curriculum of a critical thinking workshop that was being written up, using knowledge I had just recently learnt from a college elective. 

As the NGO works a lot with EU funding programs, a big chunk of my time was also spent getting familiarised with EU bureaucracy, proposal writing, and the components of all the programmes. This meant I got to help write up supporting documents for various new projects, including a successor to Critical Reflection Academy. Considering the limited amount of time I was in Erfurt, I'm quite proud of just how many different areas and projects I could help out. Almost every project's topic was completely new to me, meaning I had to first gain a solid understanding of the background before I could properly start working on it. I'm happy to also mention that because of my LiA experience, I was motivated to organise a European Solidarity Project myself, with the European Solidarity Corps, and submitted the proposal just last week!

From recording a podcast about youth participation in the EU to interviewing German far-right protestors, my LiA experience is marked by many, memorable new experiences. I pushed myself out of several different comfort zones and developed a lot of new friendships, all while working with all sorts of leaders on problems I truly cared about. It was an unforgettable experience, and one that has undoubtedly influenced what I want to do in the future.