The Internship Offices Network is pleased to announce the selected McGill student for the 2018 summer internship at the United Nations World Food Programme in Cuba, and the recipient of the McGill Undergraduate Internship Fund, Audrey Wagner.
Audrey Wagner, BSc (AgEnvSc) Environment and Food Production
Audrey is a student in the McGill School of Environment, with a major in food production and environment, with a minor in international agriculture. She is the founder and president of the McGill Permaculture Club and has a passion for agroecology and global food security. After having spent a field study semester abroad in Panama, Audrey will be interning at the World Food Programme in Havana, Cuba over the summer of 2018. Through this internship, she hopes to gain experience, knowledge and specific skills about food security and sovereignty in Cuba, in the hopes of working in the future with agriculture-related international organizations in Latin America in the future. Specifically, she wants to work with farmers to help them develop strategies that will improve their resilience, livelihoods, sustainability, productivity, and simultaneous mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
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In the summer of 2018 I was granted the opportunity to intern at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Havana, Cuba. The McGill Undergraduate Internship Fund I received through McGill’s Internship Offices Network enabled me to take part in this internship by providing me with the funds to travel abroad to the internship location, cover my living expenses such as rent and food, and provide me with a stipend for my work. I am eternally grateful for this award, without which I would not have been able to embark on this life-changing educational experience.
Since I first began studying at McGill three years ago, I have wanted to take part in this very internship in Cuba with the WFP. I am pursuing an honours in food production and environment with a minor in international agriculture, and I have a high interest in global food security. My interests and passions closely coincide with the work of the WFP, as it is the leading humanitarian organization that delivers food assistance in emergencies and works with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. The WFP has committed to achieving Zero Hunger worldwide by 2030, as well as attaining food security for all and improved nutrition. In Cuba specifically, the WFP works on supporting food security and nutrition-related social protection programmes; strengthening links between social protection systems and agricultural value chains; and increasing community resilience, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation capacities at the local level.
My tasks and responsibilities as an intern in this organization consisted of:
- Systematizing the report of the project on the management of infocommunication: creating a document of approximately thirty-five pages entitled, A Tool for the Management and Strengthening of Infocommunication: The Case of Integrated Drought Management in Cuba, which documents the step by step process as well as the lessons learned. The objective of this document is to serve as a starting point for all people and institutions that would like to recreate a similar process to close gaps in any infocommunication-related problem. This task required meetings with professors of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana.
- Conducting surveys with field monitors: carrying out surveys with field monitors to document the lessons learned in the DIPECHO project, specifically on the subject of infocommunication management.
- Creating the new Welcome Briefing Package for new employees, interns, or volunteers coming to work with WFP Cuba from abroad.
- Updating and adding pictures to the employee organigram for the arrival of the new WFP Representative: graphic design work.
- Systematization of two Good Practices documents for publishing: one for the process of infocommunication management; one for Service Fairs.
- Supporting in the preparation of the Country Briefs of June and July.
- Selecting photographic materials for various publications.
- Translating various documents from Spanish to English, as well as from English to Spanish.
- Editing several information sheets and donor reports.
- Researching data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI) to support the drafting of donor reports (DIPECHO).
- Researching information and statistics on gender in Cuba.
- Supporting the preparation of folders for KOICA representatives and preparation of the Conceptual Note and PPT presentation for the meeting with KOICA.
- Putting together a document highlighting and explaining all linkages between WFP's work, SDGs #2, #5 and #17, with all other SDGs.
- Conducting research on the new approach to financing for development: "From Funding to Financing".
The biggest challenge of the internship was integrating into the office dynamic due to Spanish not being my mother tongue. Although I am fluent in Spanish, it was hard to get my full personality across in the context of things like jokes and humour, sarcasm and local references. Nonetheless, my Spanish communication skills continued to improve at a rapid pace throughout the whole internship and I was able to develop good professional relationships with my all office coworkers.
The experience I gained during the course of this internship, inside the office and out, is invaluable. It has allowed for my professional growth through placing me out of my comfort zone and increasing my adaptability, while reshaping my perspective of a different culture as well as my own. This internship has reinforced my dream of working for a United Nations agency abroad in the future and I look forward to continuing to work in the field of international development, global food security, and sustainable agriculture with international organizations like those of the UN.
