Internship at SIMPLE project

My name is Frilly Andrelia Utami, I am a student from one of Project SIMPLE university partners that is Tadulako University in Palu, Indonesia. The Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague supported me by scholarship and travel costs to study one semester at the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences. During my exchange, I was very lucky to participate in an internship  at the Project SIMPLE student internship program and at Agrinatura.

            It was a very interesting experience to participate in Project SIMPLE internship and I feel like I learned some skills that might be helpful for my future career. I was given the responsibility to help students from Czech University of Life Sciences connect with students from several Southeast Asian universities to discuss each of their internship experience with Project SIMPLE through online platforms. In the end of the discussion, students were asked to write a report on the similarities and differences of their experiences, lessons learned, and feedbacks for Project SIMPLE. I had the responsibility to lead the student group and write a summary report on the multiple reports the students have written.

            This task gave me great insights on how different internship experience can be for students with different backgrounds. I had the chance to compare challenges in varying internship environments, such as villages, big and small companies, NGO, and even abroad, followed up with discussion of how to overcome the challenges and improve the internship experience. Not only that, thanks to Project SIMPLE internship I had the opportunity to develop effective communication skill, verbal and written, from having to communicate with several different people through emails with varying degree of availability. I also learned to manage time and deadlines, setting up goals and ways to achieve the goals to satisfy the work demands. 

            I found these skills to be important for my future career path, especially that I am planning to find career in development, where effective communication is lucrative for teamwork and with stakeholders. Being able to train communication and managing skills complimented the courses that I took while studying in Czech University of Life Sciences as well. Thanks to the Project SIMPLE internship, I am more confident to enter the work force and to pursue my future career in development.