It is surreal to think that the fellowship is coming to a close. From all of the planning that took place in the spring to being at Sankara to attending accelerator and compiling deliverables, it has been nine months full of learning, experience and vocational discernment. Although the ever present question of “what am I doing after college?” has been in the back of my mind for a while now, it is only recently that I have had time to really start unpacking this experience in my head and figure out how it will play into my next steps and ultimately the life I want to create for myself.
Looking back, the medical service trip I took to Ghana my sophomore year has proven to be a more pivotal event in my life than I could have ever imagined at the time. I felt completely ineffectual and embarrassed to be part of a team that was clearly not doing much good. I could see that the problem was much larger than just the fact that a village didn’t have a clinic, and I knew I was interested in being a part of that larger solution. This feeling was what first motivated me to apply to the fellowship, and this program has given me a framework for thinking about and processing the problems developing countries face. I remember sitting in class early spring quarter when we had just started to go through some social enterprise models thinking, “Yes! This makes so much sense!” This excitement and hunger to learn more about how business can be used as a tool to generate sustainable change has only strengthened as the fellowship has progressed.
Social entrepreneurship creates an intersection where many of the things I am interested in and passionate about come together: business, economic empowerment, public health and social justice. In addition, many of the ideas that are fundamental to most social enterprises have grounded some of the more abstract beliefs I had before starting the fellowship, such as the fact that giving people a hand out is usually not the answer – instead, we need to understand the ecosystem of a community before trying to affect change within it and such change often works best and is most sustainable when it is community driven.
Working with Sankara exposed me to a whole new set of working conditions, challenges and rewards that I would not have experienced at a more traditional summer internship. While in the field, I found I was the most energized when Jana and I were confronted with a challenge we needed to solve fast. One example that comes to mind was when we found out we needed to design a patient survey and essentially change our entire project 48 hours before leaving for our first eye screening camp. This confirmed that I work best when under pressure and need to solve a problem using multiple resources.
Though Sankara is able to deliver amazingly efficient and fast patient care, our ability to obtain needed resources and conduct interviews was decidedly the opposite. The generally slow pace of getting things done and the seemingly boundless amount of time spent waiting around or trying to articulate what we needed was incredibly frustrating and by far the most challenging aspect of being in the field for me. This was valuable information in and of itself, as I have realized just how much I value good communication and productivity while surrounded by people who feel the same way.
One facet that really surprised me was how much I learned from and enjoyed writing the final report. Synthesizing the data and the observations we made in the field into a compelling story was a challenge I found both stimulating and very rewarding. As the writing process progressed, I found I knew much more about Sankara than I realized and that details or events I had gotten so used to seeing while in the field were actually very relevant and valuable. I enjoy working with data and analyzing information, but I have also found that using a more qualitative process can be equally interesting and add an incredible amount of value to quantitative information. This process is definitely something that I can envision myself doing again in the future. Overall, this experience has helped me form a better idea of the type of environment where I work best: somewhere fast paced, where I need to be resourceful to solve problems while still holding some autonomy.
Over the past several years, my dream career has bounced around from professional rider to doctor, to lawyer and back to professional rider pretty consistently. When I stumbled across international development sophomore year, I was immediately fascinated. It sounded like it would be a great fit because of the multidisciplinary approach and global focus. The fellowship experience has confirmed both my desire to work in this field and that what I have chosen to study, economics and public health, will help me get there. There will be many big decisions to make in the coming months and though I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, there is no question that my experience as a global social benefit fellow will help me make them. I am certain I want to do something that will allow me to engage with the world around me and continue to learn and explore. This fellowship has given me much more confidence in my vocational path and has made more willing to take risks. I am now sure I want to go to graduate school to continue learning about international development, if not next year then very soon. Applying to grad school this year is both a very exciting thought and a terrifying one that I would have never even considered a year ago.
The tools and increased self-awareness that I have gained from this fellowship will useful wherever I end up next year and in the years to come. Maybe it will be grad school or maybe it will be somewhere else, yet I know now that I am more curious about the world than ever and I cannot wait to continue learning from this experience, finding new ways to engage with the world around me.