SELCO Foundation - Week 1
I've been at SELCO Foundation for 1 week. I work 9:30am-5:30pm, Monday-Saturday. I thought this would be terrible, but it's actually great. I haven't had to work after hours (yet).
Today marks my 7th day of work, and it is one of my favorite parts of India (except for food, food is the best part). SELCO is a NGO with many focuses, primarily that of sustainability. As someone who attends Portland State University, sustainability is a language I know well.
Before beginning work last Monday, I wasn't sure what to expect or what work I would be doing. I arrive my first morning, and awkwardly sat at a random table for 30 minutes, confused and unsure of why I had even come to India. I felt completely out of place and unqualified. However, two minutes after my supervisor showed up, she sat me down, told me my tasks, and left me for the day.
Task 1: Review all the videos, websites, brochures, and other materials for SELCO. SELCO is made up of multiple parts: SELCO Foundation, SELCO India, and SELCO Incubation. Check out their awesome websites! I'm not going to lie, but I fell in love with this organization by reading their case studies.
My second day in the organization went from me continuing with Task 1 for a total of half an hour. I then was thrown into another project.
Task 2 (& 3): Find activities surrounding water and energy, connect these activities to sustainability. Then create lesson plans for facilitators in government schools (aka public schools, these are usually rural and poor communities). It went a little like this:
Step 1: Find an activity, hope that it makes sense.
Step 2: "Wait, should we put sustainability in week 1 or week 2?"
Step 3: This week's lesson plan is too "science-y"
Step 4: We remap the lesson plans
Step 5: I'm no longer working on the water lesson plans, but rather the energy lesson plans.
Step 6: I need food. I eat half of a coworker's raisins
Step 7: After 5 days of working on this project, I complete the Energy lesson plans
Step 8: I show up to work and decide that I need to test the activity: Jumping Frog. I create an origami frog to demonstrate kinetic energy. It goes TERRIBLE. I fix the lesson, and hope for the best.
While this work may seem boring to some, it has been such an incredible experience so far. I am in charge of creating actual materials for an NGO that shares a lot of my values. With sustainability at the core of the work here, I feel very at home with the conversations and the work. I'm never disappointed coming to work because the environment is amazing.
Other highlights from SELCO:
Today marks my 7th day of work, and it is one of my favorite parts of India (except for food, food is the best part). SELCO is a NGO with many focuses, primarily that of sustainability. As someone who attends Portland State University, sustainability is a language I know well.
 |
| You can't see it but I am literally standing on the stone slab that connects the office to the street, over the large gap below. |
Before beginning work last Monday, I wasn't sure what to expect or what work I would be doing. I arrive my first morning, and awkwardly sat at a random table for 30 minutes, confused and unsure of why I had even come to India. I felt completely out of place and unqualified. However, two minutes after my supervisor showed up, she sat me down, told me my tasks, and left me for the day.
Task 1: Review all the videos, websites, brochures, and other materials for SELCO. SELCO is made up of multiple parts: SELCO Foundation, SELCO India, and SELCO Incubation. Check out their awesome websites! I'm not going to lie, but I fell in love with this organization by reading their case studies.
My second day in the organization went from me continuing with Task 1 for a total of half an hour. I then was thrown into another project.
Task 2 (& 3): Find activities surrounding water and energy, connect these activities to sustainability. Then create lesson plans for facilitators in government schools (aka public schools, these are usually rural and poor communities). It went a little like this:
Step 1: Find an activity, hope that it makes sense.
Step 2: "Wait, should we put sustainability in week 1 or week 2?"
Step 3: This week's lesson plan is too "science-y"
Step 4: We remap the lesson plans
Step 5: I'm no longer working on the water lesson plans, but rather the energy lesson plans.
Step 6: I need food. I eat half of a coworker's raisins
Step 7: After 5 days of working on this project, I complete the Energy lesson plans
Step 8: I show up to work and decide that I need to test the activity: Jumping Frog. I create an origami frog to demonstrate kinetic energy. It goes TERRIBLE. I fix the lesson, and hope for the best.
While this work may seem boring to some, it has been such an incredible experience so far. I am in charge of creating actual materials for an NGO that shares a lot of my values. With sustainability at the core of the work here, I feel very at home with the conversations and the work. I'm never disappointed coming to work because the environment is amazing.
Other highlights from SELCO:
- Going to the Science Express. A 12 train-car science exhibit featuring things on solar panels, climate change, global warming, and many other topics.
- Having my choice of regular tea, lemon tea, or coffee every day in the office at 11-ish and 4-ish.
- Having the best coworkers. Everyone is engaged and willing to help you work through problems. They also share food with me a lot of the times.
- Eating on the roof almost every afternoon
- Being around innovative, smart, extraordinary interns from all over India and the world
- The view from the roof. I start most of my days grounding myself by going to the roof to just stare at the city.
It's hard to hate coming in on Saturdays, when the place I come to is so happy and optimistic about the world. While I work in the education lab, there is a lab for tech, solar panels, HR, incubation, design, livelihoods, and we are all working towards sustainable solutions.
Who would have thought I'd find my own little piece of home here?
Comments
Post a Comment