This summer, I had the immense privilege of working as an intern with the Canadian program team at Equitas Centre for Human Rights Education. By the end of this internship, I will be entering my fourth and last year at 69热视频. I will be completing my degree in political science and history. I always had a strong interest in human rights and social justice advocacy. My goal through this internship was to gain hand on experience in an non-profit organization and deepen my commitment to human rights. Having previously been involved on campus and being inspired by my classes, I hoped that being an intern at Equitas would allow me to fulfill my goal of connecting the knowledge acquired through my academic journey into meaningful action. I am confident to say that by the end of my internship, I have acquired practical knowledge on how a non-profit organization works to accomplish their goal.
Equitas is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and concretization of human rights. It is with education that Equitas hopes to empower individuals to protect, defend and respect human rights. More particularly, the Canadian program team at Equitas focuses on children鈥檚 rights and its promotion across Canada. It is by collaborating with youth across Canadian provinces that Equitas works to protect children rights. By building strong ties with different partners in different communities, members of the Canadian team educate and provide the necessary tools for children鈥檚 rights to be respected. Equitas does so by providing training and toolkits to partners that work closely with youth. As an intern, my main responsibility was to support the ongoing projects that the team had been working on with their partners. This included summer camp trainings on human rights, facilitation of different activities and the ongoing communication with partners. I had the opportunity to facilitate many workshops on children鈥檚 rights and provide concreate tools on how adults can promote the respect of these rights. The team at Equitas was extremely supportive and inspiring to work with. Throughout my internship, the team trusted my ability to take on certain leadership positions on these projects. One of my favorite aspect of being an intern at Equitas was meeting all the different partners across Canada from communities. I have learned a great amount about the concretization of children鈥檚 rights from these relationships.
Recently, Equitas focused on highlighting more anti-racism practices and has actively been working to promote inclusivity and trauma-informed principles into their work. The team internally took advantage of the summer to grow as a team in respect to their knowledge of human rights practices. Every two weeks, a member of the team led a session around different human rights topics and opened up the discussion of how Equitas as an organization could learn from new practices. I had the opportunity to present a topic myself about harm reduction, which helped grow my facilitation and public speaking skills.
One of the challenge of working this summer as an intern was the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. During my entire internship, I worked remotely from home. These unusual circumstances made me at times feel isolated and unmotivated to stay all day alone in front of my laptop. However, the team at Equitas made these circumstances as enjoyable as possible. Notably by scheduling numerous check-in meetings and team building activities.
Unfortunately, I will not be receiving academic credit for my internship. However, the experience I have had working this summer with Equitas connects perfectly to my degree and my future professional objectives. This internship allowed me to experience what is human rights meant outside an academic setting while also contributing to my education. My university experience would not have been completed without my internship at Equitas. It has been an extremely valuable opportunity to experience what a work place environment in a non-profit organization would be like after my degree.
