Praktikum, Indien, Delhi, Neu-Delhi, Bericht, AIESEC, India, Internship, Traineeship, Marketing, Organisation, Austausch, Praktikumsbericht
Ich bin bis jetzt leider nicht dazu gekommen bzw. hab einfach keine Lust gehabt diesen Bericht ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Wer allerdings ernsthaft an einem Praktikum in Indien interessiert ist wird wohl keine Probleme haben diesen Report in englischer Sprache zu lesen. Die Literaturempfehlungen am Ende sind dann wieder auf Deutsch. Wenn ich jemandem mit den folgenden Infos helfen konnte freue ich mich über einen Gästebucheintrag! Und wenn ihr irgendwelche Fehler findet (Rechtschreibung, Navigation oder sonstwas): schreibt mir bitte ne kurze Email damit ichs verbessern kann. DANKE! Internship Report AIESEC Development Traineeship - New Delhi, India March – May 2004 Introduction My motivation & the search for the traineeship My employer The traineeship My experiences Conclusion Literaturempfehlungen Introduction This report is the concluding element of my AIESEC-Traineeship. I write this report in a rather informal style with the purpose to inform others about the process of finding an internship, my experiences and so on. There maybe some content that some
people are already familiar with. In this case I would like to ask you just to ignore these passages and go on with reading if you like ;-) My traineeship took place in New Delhi, India and lasted for 9 weeks from the 8th of March to the 7th of May 2004. It was a development traineeship which means that my employer was not a company but a not-for-profit / non-governmental organization. My motivation & the search for the traineeship In the first half of 2003 I studied for one semester abroad in New Zealand. It was a great experience being exposed to a completely different environment on the other side of the world. After I came back I began to develop the idea (and also some kind of wanderlust) to go abroad again. To make it a clearly different experience I wanted to do a traineeship to encounter the everyday
working routine abroad. The idea took shape quite fast but it was very difficult to find suitable internships abroad that catered to my needs. During this period I also filled out an extensive form on the AIESEC website but later forgot about it (because there was no reply of any kind that somebody read it or what I should / could do next!). Then in November 2003 I read more or less accidentally about a workshop of AIESEC Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, Germany is my home
University). I asked how to apply and also how I could apply for a traineeship. I was told that there would be an Assessment Center on the following weekend. I thought why not, turned down my party plans for the weekend and attended the Assessment Center where they told me on the second day that they would be happy to help me in finding a traineeship and send me abroad. In the following weeks I began to work through the AIESEC traineeship database on the internet. I was
relatively open-minded about the country where I wanted to spend the internship (it "just" had to be an English-speaking country outside of Europe) but I had a rather narrow time frame because I am/was in my last year of studies and I still have/had to write my final thesis. All in all I found a few of interesting job offers and I applied with the help of my local AIESEC committee for 2 or 3 of them. Then sometime in December we received a positive answer on one
of the applications from Delhi, India. Because of the Christmas holidays and the turn of the year it took a few weeks to the very beginning of January until the formal Acceptance Notes were exchanged. After that I immediately booked my ticket to India and on the 6th of March 2004 I boarded the plane heading to Delhi. My employer
The organisation that I worked for is a middle-sized NGO called Pravah. They are based in New Delhi, India, and are (very roughly) working in the field of social awareness building among young people (students). One of their tasks is to expose Indian students from the urban areas to the rural India by organizing some exchange programs, events and other things, because even in India people from the city hardly know much about the rural life in their country.
The traineeship The traineeship was part of the newly formed Corporate Social Responsibility Network that was initiated by AIESEC India. Just in the first week I got the chance to attend an AIESEC workshop on the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Bangalore. That was great luck because through that I had the opportunity to do a 38-hour train journey across whole India already in the first
week of my stay (which was great fun thanks to Jop, a Dutch trainee, who traveled with me). After that interesting workshop I started my work at Pravah. I was working on a new project (with the working title "BUS" which will be changed at a later point of time) that aims to promote and support social entrepreneurship among the Indian youth. It is a joint project of the NGO"s Ashoka India and Pravah. The vision is to develop a sustained
culture, environment and support for youth social entrepreneurship in India. BUS plans to accomplish this by launching outstanding youth social entrepreneurs throughout India. The launch process will involve extensive training of candidates in social entrepreneurship, mentoring and coaching by leading social entrepreneurs, and financial support to seed youth social entrepreneurship projects. Simultaneously, the program will try to expand its reach to social entrepreneurs to build widespread
commitment to, and processes and cultures for youth development in leading social organisations. When I joint Pravah in March 2004 the project was just in its initial start-up phase. At this point of time Ashoka and Pravah were setting up the whole "specification" of the young social entrepreneur award program: how it should look like, what it should contain, how it should be implemented and so on. In the first two weeks I
conducted a web-based research on existing similar award program worldwide. The goal was to find out about best practice examples and how they exactly look like. I was able to set up a small database containing 21 more or less suitable examples of award programs all-over the world. After that I was supposed to do some more research on some other topics connected to the project but someone found out that somebody of the partner NGO Ashoka already did this work so that I was made more or less redundant instantly. Fortunately there were enough things on the project that had not yet been thought through and so we developed two other main tasks for me.
The first one was to write a complete draft marketing report for the award program. As there were no fixed plans, strategies and schemes about the marketing of the project at this point of time, the aim was to write a report with first proposals and options. The purpose of this report was to generate ideas and show possible marketing routes that could be used as a basis for further discussions among the people who were responsible for the project. I
had great fun in working on this report because it was something that I had learned in theory in university and now I was able to use my knowledge in practice. It took about 4 weeks from the first thought till I finished the final version of my marketing plan. At some point of time I also began to work on my second big project which was a report about the application and selection procedure for the award program. The purpose of this report was to give an introductory
overview and initial thoughts/ideas for the application and selection process for the candidates of the young social entrepreneur award. It consisted mainly of a summary of possible modules for a multi-stage selection procedure. The report should provide a basis for further and more in-depth discussions about the selection process for the projects candidates. I worked on this report for about 3 weeks. One of the best things about these tasks was that I was responsible for
the two reports completely on my own. Both reports were my own special projects and I was given free hand in conducting my research and writing these reports. In my last week of work I prepared a presentation in which I presented the results of my work to my colleagues. Next to these main tasks I also worked on some other projects. The most important (and time consuming one) was to work on a website that is maintained by Pravah: http://www.younginfluencers.com. The web-designer that worked on this site just changed and so I worked with the new programmer, gave some help and advice on the restructuring of the website and operated sometimes as a kind of interface between my organisation and the programmer. My experiences The internship was a great experience and I am
pretty sure that I helped me to change and improve my point of view, my attitude toward a lot of things and also my whole personality! First of all I do have to admit that I had to struggle quite a bit at the beginning. Delhi was just so different from what I knew so far. It is noisy, dusty, hectic and often quite stressful. But after I while I managed to adjust to this new situation quite good and that made me confident that I am able to cope with a new and very
different working and especially living environment. Nevertheless you get reminded at every corner that India is indeed still a developing country and I perceived it mainly as the country of the extremes - and the country of moustaches ;-) : One the one hand there are lots of very nice and helpful people and on the other hand (especially when you are traveling) you have lots of very annoying tourist touts and others who try to rip you off just because
you look like are a foreign tourist. There are lots of very nice places and really unique and impressive monuments and sometimes there are awful places (e.g. wild garbage dumps) right next to it. There are also expensive western style shops and (a few) shopping malls were you can buy expensive stuff and there are also lots of very poor neighborhoods, villages and slums. All these impressions were an important part of my stay in
India and I also had the opportunity see quite a lot of places on the weekends (Thanks a lot to Pravah that they made this possible by giving me the weekends completely off!!!). If you are interested in some pictures of my journeys have a look at here! Conclusion I am very glad that I did the traineeship at Pravah. It gave me
hands-on experience on how to live and work in a very different cultural environment and also it was great fun to meet some very nice people (the other international interns, my colleagues, people from AIESEC India and others) and to travel a bit through North India. With 9 weeks (+ another 2 weeks of trekking in the Himalaya afterwards) my traineeship was quite short. Nevertheless I got a great insight into the work of Pravah and it were really exciting 9 weeks and for me the timing was almost perfect. At the end I was also a little bit looking forward going home again because with all the working during the week and traveling on the weekends it was a quite stressful (but exciting) time ;-)
Before I finish with this report I would like to thank a few people: Thanks to Pranav from AIESEC India and his whole family for their great help and hospitality especially in the first week of my stay. Thanks to my colleagues at Pravah – it was great fun working with them and they are all really nice people! And also thanks to Matthias from AIESEC Düsseldorf who helped me with the AIESEC application
procedure! Well, I think thats about it. I hope I could give you a little insight about my traineeship in India and that this short report is of some help for you!! If you have some further questions dont hesitate to contact me! Please try it first via phone on my landline cause this is the fastest and easiest way for me. Rüdiger Hahn in May 2004 (Ab hier wieder auf Deutsch:) Literaturempfehlung / Bücher 
City of Djinns - A Year in Delhi (William Dalrymple)
Jeder der eine längere Zeit in Delhi verbringen möchte sollte sich dieses Buch zulegen! Es bietet einen hervorragenden und uneingeschränkt lesenwerten Einblick über das Leben in dieser Stadt, ihre Geschichte, Eigenarten und Feinheiten!! Eine ware Fundgrube an Informationen und Geschichten und dazu beste Unterhaltung!! "Dalrymple fuehrt den Leser in eine bezaubernde Welt. Mit grossem Herz, genauer Sachkenntnis und
einer wunderbaren Erzaehlkraft zeigt er dem Leser die vielen Gesichter der Stadt Delhi und ihren Einwohnern. Wie eine spannende Detektivlektuere entfaltet er die historischen Wurzeln von dieser Stadt. Dies ist eine spannende Lektuere, die zu den Juwelen der zeitgenoessischen Reiseliteratur zaehlt. Ein wahrer Schatz fuer alle Interessierte in indischer Geschichte und Kultur." (von amazon.de) Von William Dalrymple gibt es noch mehr ausgezeichnete Bücher über Indien. Für eine Übersicht hier klicken!  Lonely Planet: Delhi (09/2002)
Hier noch ein Städtereiseführer (auf Englisch!) für alle diejenigen, die sich länger in Delhi aufhalten möchten. Wichtige Adressen, Telefonnummern, Internetadressen, übersichtsartige Stadtkarten, dazu allgemeines zum Leben in Indien und Delhi und natürlich alle interessanten Sehenswürdigkeiten werden
in diesem Buch behandelt. Insgesamt gibts aber viele Überschneidungen mit den Ausgaben "India" und "North India" (siehe hier). "This guide provides extensive information on a range of places to stay and eat for both business and leisure travellers. Advice is given on where to buy traditional crafts, along with details on excursions
from Delhi, and of walking tours through Old Delhi." (von der Amazon-Website)  Notbremse nicht zu früh ziehen! (Andreas Altmann)
Und wer vorab (oder nachher) noch mehr hervorragende Eindrücke und Einblicke in das indische Leben (und Reisen) haben möchte sollte sich unbedingt dieses Buch hier mal näher anschauen. "Die Grundregel jedes guten Reporters lautet: Nichts schon wissen, alles vor Ort erfahren. Andreas Altmann hat sich daran gehalten. Er hat sich in Bombay in den Zug gesetzt und ist einfach drauflosgefahren. Mit dem festen Vorsatz, Indien mit allen Sinnen in sich aufzunehmen. Altmann sucht
den Menschen und er findet ihn, in Slums, Bordellmeilen, Hindu-Heiligtümern und in der drangvollen Enge der Indian Railways." (von amazon.de)  The Age of Kali (William Dalrymple) - englisch!
Und noch ein Meisterwerk von Dalrymple. Dieses Buch befasst sich im ^Gegensatz zum obigen mit ganz Indien: "The result of 10 year's living and travelling throughout the Indian subcontinent, The Age of Kali emerges from Dalrymple's uneasy sense that the region is slipping into the most fearsome of all epochs in ancient Hindu cosmology: "the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali, the lowest possible throw, an epoch of
strife, corruption, darkness and disintegration". The brilliance of this book lies in its refusal to slip into the cultural pessimism of books such as V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief. Dalrymple's love for the subcontinent, and his feel for its diverse cultural identity, comes across in every page, which makes its chronicles of political corruption, ethnic violence and social disintegration all the more poignant. The
scope of the book is particularly impressive, from the vivid opening chapters portraying the lawless caste violence of Bihar, to interviews with the drug barons on the North-West Frontier, and Dalrymple's extraordinary encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. .... The Age of Kali is a dark, disturbing book which takes the pulse of a continent facing some tough questions." (von amazon.de) Weitere ausführliche Hinweise und Empfehlungen zu
Reiseführern und Reiseliteratur über Indien (aufgeteilt in Gesamtindien, Nordindien und Südindien) gibt es hier! | 
