I am a Fourth Year Law Student at Taungoo University, Myanmar, and was an intern, at the Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia Community Legal Education Initiative (BABSEACLE) Myanmar office from the 2nd to the 31st of May, 2016. At the office, I had a wonderful experience, gained valuable knowledge, got beautiful memories and developed fantastic skills and values.
I wanted to become an intern immediately after I saw an advertisement for the position posted by BABSEACLE. This was due to many reasons including I wanted an experience that I cannot get from my University. I tried hard to achieve this dream, to join the BABSEACLE team and to gain pro bono hands-on experience… and my dream came true!
As a BABSEACLE intern, I participated in the Community Legal Education (CLE) Externship Programme, Supervision and Report Writing Workshop, from the 7th to the 8th of May, 2016, at Rule of Law Centre, Yangon. Taking part in that workshop, as an intern, was entirely different from taking part, as a participant, as I had done, in the past. I prepared: materials; pre-test and post-test questions; an evaluation sheet for the workshop; a session plan for the Meet & Greet Session and for the energizer activity; session reports for each session; and helped the trainers when needed. By taking part in that workshop, I learnt a lot about Supervision and Report Writing, from the awesome trainers, and for one week afterwards, I worked on evaluations. During the last week of my internship, I was in charge of the library, by taking photos of books, adding new books to the shelter, updating the library lists and by connecting a hyper link. I believe that this skill will help me when I go back to Taungoo University.
Thanks to this experience, I have developed a lot of skills such as translation, photographing, critical thinking, computer using, English, library management, preparing materials, communication and leadership skills. Moreover, my writing skill has also improved as I had to write a weekly time-log and weekly reflective journal. In addition, I have learnt about values like unity, punctuality, accuracy, discipline, activeness, confidence and I have also learnt how to prepare a workshop and how to do evaluation after it.
It is undeniable that this experience as an intern was one of the most valuable experiences that I have ever got in my life and it is sure that this one-month experience can help me in the future, whenever I will do something important in my life. Therefore, I would like to thank all the BABSEACLE team members, who were really friendly, helpful and kind to me, also for giving me this opportunity. And, if possible, I would like to join BABSEACLE team and have this opportunity again in the future!!
By Nadi Win Lei, Law Student at Taungoo University, intern for BABSEACLE