Summer Field Fellowship

Alexander Chaves, Department of Justice, Community Relations Service, Los Angeles Field Office

Dina Hanania, United Nations Population Fund, Amman, Jordan

Carolyn Ebersol, Partners in Development, Inc., Ixtacapa, Guatemala

Katherine Meyer, ACCORD, Durbin, South Africa

Ayaka Oishi, PeaceTech Lab, Washington DC

Kayla Owens, Department of Justice, Community Relations Service, Washington DC

Click on each student’s name to read their field blog:

Selin Aksoy

Country: Beirut, Lebanon

Organization: Danish Refugee Council

Position: Protection Monitoring Intern

As Protection Intern at the Danish Refugee Council in Beirut, Lebanon, Selin mainly coordinated the review and roll-out of new community- and household-level protection monitoring tools, enabling the organization to identify and track protection concerns experienced by Syrian refugees across the country. This included meeting with populations of concern and field teams to identify and respond to the challenges faced while conducting protection monitoring as well as coordinating with UN-led protection working groups to identify priority areas of investigation. Moreover, she organized and facilitated a workshop for field teams on the new protection monitoring methodology and wrote a quarterly protection monitoring report for a high-level donor. In addition to the review and rollout of the protection monitoring tools, Selin took the lead in ensuring that monthly reporting by protection field teams was timely and accurate.

Jessica Bissett & Chelsea Dunlap 

Country: Gulu, Uganda 

Organization: Refugee Law Project 

Position: Conflict, Transitional Justice, and Governance Intern

Chelsea and Jessica worked as Conflict, Transitional Justice, and Governance interns for Refugee Law Project from May until August 2016. They worked on a variety of projects during their time in Gulu, Uganda. Chelsea and Jessica attended the Institute for African Transitional Justice and wrote the annual report on the week-long event. They also conducted interviews for and edited The Wounds Can Heal; a book of stories on survivors who had recovered from injuries caused by the war. In addition to this, they profiled and assisted victims with untreated war injuries to obtain medical treatment. Chelsea and Jessica spent much of their time conducting field interviews throughout the region to establish a relationship between depression and transitional justice and wrote a qualitative report based on this research for mental health advocacy and policies in northern Uganda. Their final project over the summer was working with the International Crimes Division and local NGOs to provide support to victims and witnesses during the Thomas Kwoyelo trial. 

Yasmine Fawaz

Country: Switzerland 

Organization: UNHCR 

Fadia Hayee

Country: Turkey

Organization: UNDP

Alex Humphrey

Country: Kenya

Organization: The Life and Peace Institute and The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation

Mark Joy 

Country: Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom 

Organization: CO-OPERATION IRELAND, Youth and Education Programs   

Position: Project Management Intern

The main program Mark was assigned to at Co-operation Ireland was “Amazing the Space,” a youth and education initiative, that coincided with the UN International Day of Peace in September. “Amazing the Space” was a youth–led peacebuilding initiative that brought thousands of young people together from across Northern Ireland to celebrate their contributions to peace and to show them that play an important role in building and sustaining a peaceful society moving forward.  He reported directly to the CEO and the Director of Fundraising as well as colleagues from partnering organizations. Mark’s main tasks included various aspects of program planning, such as procurement, graphic design coordination, research, and data collection. Additionally, he was responsible for communication and logistic support around the “Amazing the Space” launch event that took place at the end of June.

Mirjam Kalle 

Country: Beirut, Lebanon 

Organization: Mercy Corps & Protection Intern, Danish Refugee Council

Position: Program Development and Quality Intern

As a fellow in the Program Development and Quality Unit of Mercy Corps Lebanon, Mirjam prepared the organization’s annual country strategy, conducted background research on child labor and early marriage, and wrote the child protection and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) strategies with national staff and regional coordinators. She further proofread and line-edited weekly donor reports, conducted interviews in the field offices to assess needs and improve coordination mechanisms with the headquarter, and established a knowledge management database to enhance integrated programming. During the second half of her stay, she worked as a Protection Intern at the Danish Refugee Council, where she developed a pilot conflict transformation program for adolescent boys and girls of refugee and host communities, wrote communication material, and participated in interagency coordination meetings.

Alissa Lalime 

Country: Cairo, Egypt, with temporary duties in Amman, Jordan, and Tunis, Tunisia

Organization: International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Position: Department of Operations and Emergencies (DOE) Intern

Alissa created Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MCOF) documents in collaboration with Country Offices in the MENA region. In doing so, she aggregated existing resources and materials available to Country Offices, and developed new materials, as required. Alissa interviewed Country, Regional, and Headquarters colleagues on their interaction with the MCOF. She additionally submitted a final report on my findings, including strategies and recommendations for enhanced MCOF implementation. Her work culminated in MCOF strategy documents with IOM Libya, IOM Sudan, and IOM Yemen.

Nick Zaremba

Country: Liberia 

Organization: The Kaizen Company 

Position: Program Officer 

For Nick’s summer internship, he interned in Liberia as a Program Officer for a U.S. Department of State-funded project called Mitigating Local Disputes in Liberia (MLDL); implemented by The Kaizen Company. There, he supports the project by designing and implementing mediation training and an organizational self-assessment to strengthen over 30 community and governmental security councils (structures) in their ability to identify and peacefully resolve security concerns. Nick also worked closely with the home office in Washington to research monitoring and evaluation indicators, help manage and analyze a large database of security concerns, and use the data uncovered by the assessments to write a progress report on each structure. Though his internship was based in Ganta, his tasks gave him the opportunity to travel throughout the country to visit the various structures and conduct mediation training. This experience was invaluable as it afforded Nick the opportunity to learn about the challenges of doing peacebuilding work in the field as well as how it relates to West African culture.

Click on each student’s name to read their field blog:

Taylor Colvin, IPIECA, England

Rachel Kuykendall, Mercy Corps, Jordan

Meredith Medlin, Catholic Relief Services, Kenya

Matthew Parkes, Georg Eckert Institute, Germany

Emma Rehard, Mercy Corps, Ethiopia