Foro Ciudadano de Participación por la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos (FOCO)

Organization: Foro Ciudadano de Participación por la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos (FOCO)

City: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Unpaid

I loved working at FOCO.  Basically, the organization has two parts.  One works on transnational corporations and their human rights abuses and the other part works on gender issues.  This is because the founders are a husband and wife team who specialize in these areas.  I worked for both- mostly translating between English and Spanish for the transnational corporation side and then working coding interviews for the gender side.  I also had the opportunity to develop a sexual education workshop curriculum with my boss and then go with her to teach it to a group of underserved students at a private school in La Matanza.  The people at FOCO were super nice, young, and liberal.  They were EXTREMELY patient with my Spanish, and always invited me to meetings.  They were also really open to helping me with my research project for school, and including me in any way I wanted to participate.  I enjoyed going there twice a week, and my Spanish improved greatly.

MADRE- Programs Department

Organization: MADRE

City: New York, NY

“Paid”- $10/day

I had a terrible experience working for MADRE.  The organization is an established women’s human rights non-profit that works around the world.  As an intern for the programs department, all I really did was do online research or translate from English to Spanish and vice versa.  The thing I really hated about the experience was that no one spoke to me.  My boss, Natalia Caruso, had no interest in me other than the work I produced and never even asked me what my major was at school.  No one else in the office even bothered to introduce themselves.  I was never invited to meetings or even to eat lunch with others.  They simply shoved me in a dingy office by myself and gave me things to do.  My boss was not very good at communicating what she wanted, and then acted annoyed when I asked clarifying questions.  Perhaps my experience would have been different if I had worked in a different department, but stay away from Programs, people!!