Name: Sonya Friel
Class Year: 2023
Major: Anthropology and Neuroscience
Hometown: Omagh, Northern Ireland
Internship Organization: Global Fund for Children
Job Title: Program Development Intern
Location: Online
Award: Nadia Anne Mirel Memorial Internship Fund
The Global Fund for Children is an international grantmaking program that focuses on forming partnerships with small, community-based NGOs that work with young people, vulnerable groups, and children. In my role as a program development intern, I have been working on research projects regarding current global socio-economic and political issues. My major project for the summer is to research the problems faced by individual countries in Asia, identify how these issues can be tackled, and construct concept notes that outline the information found. As part of these notes, I analyze news articles and previous data provided by GFC and other international organizations, investigate previous methods and partnerships and if they have made significant impacts, and how socioeconomic and political issues overlap across borders and between countries. With this information, the team discusses how the issues found should be addressed and what steps we can take to combat them. I will then use these concept notes to identify potential GFC partners, reach out to them and provide information about our pipeline funding. Also as part of my role, I participate in meetings, conferences and summits designed to involve young people in philanthropy and global development. By the end of the summer, I will be designing and leading some of these meetings!
I applied for this internship because I am a strong believer in the core values and principles taught by GFC. GFC believes in the power of young people to help and support one another and work together to make a lasting global impact. By working with small, local organizations that are often overlooked by large grantmaking programs, offering them long-term support and training, GFC is making a huge, sustainable positive impact on communities across the world. I have always been an advocate for sustainable development, and have been involved with organizations similar to the ones that GFC partners with, so I know how important and how much of an impact long-term funding, education and training makes on small communities. Having worked with children and young people for years, I also know the huge importance of involving them in creating change and the huge impact that they can have when afforded the opportunity. I wholeheartedly agree with GFC’s mission and model, and I applied because I wanted to be involved with this team in initiating positive change.
Although I have been taking classes online for the past year, this is my first time working in a professional capacity online. I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of freedom that my internship offers: besides scheduled meetings, I am able to work from anywhere, whenever suits me. I have learned that I absolutely love researching and learning about other places and cultures; before this internship, I hadn’t even realized that it’s possible to make a career out of it. However, one thing I’m struggling a little bit with regarding working online is the difficulties in forming meaningful, lasting connections with my coworkers—small talk is pretty awkward via Zoom!
The thing that I love the most about this internship is being able to look back at what I’ve accomplished, and to look forward to see the real, meaningful impact that it will have in other peoples’ lives. Researching can be tedious and quite lonely at times, but by looking back at where I started—with hardly any/no knowledge about specific places or issues—to where I am now, with entire documents of information that will be used for years to come in analyzing global development strategies and their impacts. I plan on staying in contact with the GFC team and partner organizations that I work with so that I can witness, first-hand, communities and young people develop, and observe the positive impact that I am now a part of.
The Global Fund for Children was founded by Maya Ajmera '89.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.