Work-inesh

I figure it’s about time I write a little on what I’m actually doing in Ethiopia. I can’t tell you everything because I’ve only been at work for a week and my role is still teething. What I can tell you is that I’m excited about the work I’ve done so far and I’m optimistic that it will only get more fulfilling, challenging, and, well, fun.

As the Princeton in Africa Advocacy Fellow for Save, I’m primarily responsible for producing and assisting with advocacy materials used to assist African governments as they design their own policies to improve child welfare. This work is divided into three areas: liaison-ing, communications, and policy writing.

I’ll get to the liaison part of my job first. My direct supervisor doubly serves as head of Save’s Africa Advocacy Division and African Union Liaison. I’m charged with helping him in any way that I can. So far, the opportunities he’s provided me with have been incredible. On my first day of work, he took me to the new, monolithic African Union Headquarters. While I mostly just took notes at meetings, I got to meet several key figures in the AU child welfare community, including the head of the AU Social Services Division. Later in the week, I got to actively participate in a small meeting with the AU Liaisons from UNICEF (The UN Child Agency), UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency), and, of course, Save. At the meeting, we discussed a possible amendment to an important piece of AU legislation dealing with child rights. Hopefully I’ll get to keep working on this, because the conversation we had has the potential to turn into something important and extraordinary.

African Union HQ

While the communications part of my job may sound less sexy, it also is less sexy. BUT I’ve been learning so many important skills and having a lot of fun with it. For example, I’m in charge of producing the Africa Advocacy Update, a monthly publication detailing Save’s work all around the continent. Through this role, I’ve been learning a lot about publishing design and have become much more literate in the dealings of the organization. For someone so new to the work of Save, this has been extremely helpful. I’ll also be working on ‘Inquiry’, a more academic journal focusing on child welfare issues on the continent. I think I’ll be editing, but I’ll let you know more as soon as I begin work on it.

My desk

Finally, I’m also responsible for writing up policy briefs and longer policy papers for Save the Children. From what I understand, the organization commissions country-specific research reports, and then uses the results to develop a policy position on key child rights issues. I will be writing and editing these shorter reports. Currently, I’m writing a policy brief on child labor based on research done in Malawi. I just learned that they may be sending me there to participate in a conference of sorts on child labor later in the year.

That’s all for now. I’ll try and write up a day in the life of a Save Fellow sometime to give you a more detailed picture of my work. For my next entry though, I’ll be telling you about the reggae concert I went to this past weekend with thousands of Ethiopians.

Jah bless.