Program Reviews

I was attached to the clinical psychology department of Huye Isange Rehabilitation Center, which is a rehab facility for people with drug addiction. During that 2 months, I picked up some of the duties of clinical psychologist, such as conducting psychotherapy session and psycho-education. Throughout the process, I was closely supervised by the psychologist in the center, which allowed me to have a fingertip sense of being a psychologist.

By listening to different life stories, I realized that history does play an important role in one psychological makeup, and it's hard for one to truly know others' feeling. A vivid example is a patient, who witnessed genocide when he was a little child, told me that he still has fear reaction when he sees someone carrying a machete; but that is not the case for a foreigner. This is a valuable lesson of not assuming you know one's feeling, but by constant dialogue, we strive to understand their feeling.

Overall speaking, the whole journey is a life changing experience.

Travelling tips
- Try to immerse yourself in the culture, such as learning Kinyarwanda, visiting different museum, or even attending celebration event (e.g. umuganura day, assumption day)
- Most of the Rwandans are friendly and like talking to foreigner, be open to that kind of experience
- Some of the cities might have shortage of water or electricity supply (like few hours), be ready to that
- Motor bike is one of the common traveling means, it is mostly safe in city
- Try to negotiate the price when you are buying something from a market (but not supermarket)
- Find creative ways to overcome language barrier, since people from the old generation used to speak in Kinyarwanda and French

This internship was a life changing opportunity for me. The close interactions with the Nyamibrambo Women’s Center and other NGOs provided valuable first hand experience of how to begin these NGOs and how they run. On this internship I learnt so much about Rwanda and it’s people, it’s history, and resilience. I learnt to extend myself beyond my comfort zone and developed new and valuable academic skills while doing so - these include experience with editing, writing, photographing, marketing, hands on volunteer work, researching, and putting together proposals. My favorite part of the internship was writing blog posts for the women of the NWC, I was so inspired by the lady I was given to write on and learnt so much about leadership from her. The part of the internship that had the most impact on me was working with the Her Voice Matters program - I got to meet and contribute to the valuable work these women are doing to advance women both educationally and culturally in Rwanda.

I am so grateful that I decided to participate in this program. I fell in love with Rwanda and I was inspired by the many women we worked with. I definitely gained more than I was able to give. I was able to learn many new business-related skills as we interned for the Nyamirambo Women's center, as well as teamwork and leadership skills. I know that these skills will continue to be of value to me throughout my life. I enjoyed being able to interact with so many different organizations who are making a real positive impact in their communities and the lives of individuals. After participating in this program, I have a renewed desire to follow the example of the women that we worked with in finding ways to create real and sustainable change in the world by lifting and empowering others.

This was such an incredible program! This country and culture is unlike anything I have experienced and I really loved getting to interact with the people, and informally learning about the country as I walked through the market in Kigali.

One of the days we participated in a wonderful workshop by Generation Rise about storytelling and leadership where I was able to share my values and hear the values of the other team members, learn the correct structure of a good story, and then to hear other people’s story as well as sharing my own. I had never done any activity like this but it was crazy to see how much I learned about myself, my team members, and the people of Rwanda in such a short amount of time. The time goes so fast while you are there which was sad because I felt like I couldn't soak in everything that I want to!

One of my team members and I taught a workout class to the amazing women at the Nyamirambo Women’s Center. We split up so we were in different rooms leading at the same time. I was nervous to be on my own, but the women remembered the exercises and were so excited to get up and do them! It made me so happy because those exercises were really focusing on their health and well-being (which is what I am studying in Public Health).

I love Rwanda and all of the work we did here, my new found friends, and the countless memories!!

For me, the phrase, “Rwanda is people,” is something that I witnessed firsthand during my time in the country. Reality started to set in once I heard some locals share their stories about how their lives were impacted by the genocide that took place just over 20 years ago. Due to the sensitive nature of this topic, it was rare to hear people openly discuss in detail what they experienced. However, I also surprised by the willingness of some people to share their stories without any reservations. For example, one of our Rwandan coordinators from G.E.I, shared with us the story of how her family fled during the time of the genocide while she was just a small child. It was truly sobering to hear her share the small details of this experience that she still remembers. Some of the University of Rwanda students who we came to know during the internship were also open to discussing how the genocide affected their families. I think it’s important that the memory of the genocide remains within the hearts of the people – not just for grieving but also for healing. Visiting the genocide museum reinforced this idea and really helped me understand how Rwandan culture has evolved. The people in Rwanda have many great and powerful stories to tell – we just need to listen to them. This is what I tried to do during my time there. Sometimes, with a lot of preconceived notions about the people of a different country, it can be too easy to assume that you already understand the locals. But more important than talking to them, is listening to their point of view. Especially within the context of Infection Control and Prevention, I did my best to listen to what the healthcare workers had to share with us. It could have been easy for us to focus on what was lacking in certain areas regarding IPC, but instead, I think we encouraged positive interactions with the healthcare workers and emphasized the importance of improving, regardless of where you live. By listening to them, I was inspired by their utilization of the resources that were available to them. The healthcare workers were dedicated and diligent. I hope to be able to follow their examples during my own career in the medical field. I also made many friends with locals and those involved in our program. Thanks to the internet and the ease of global communication, I hope to maintain these great relationships for the rest of my life. Overall, I learned a lot from the people of Rwanda. If I were to sum it all up shortly, I would say the biggest lesson I learned from them is the importance of unity. Rwanda is not only a people, but they are one people, united to help the country progress sustainably into the future.

My first week apart of the FXB Program has been overall rewarding, I am both hopeful and optimistic to be apart of a program that hears the needs directly from the community and allows the community to address those needs. My internship began on Monday, June 9th, 2018, on this day I met the trained professionals who are mastering this approach. My colleagues were reconvene with a booster session held by Shauna the supervisor after her return from a visit to the states. While being apart of this briefing I became more aware of the importance of momentum and keeping the families going. Here I learned we are seeking their improvement as well as acknowledging the effectiveness of the community based volunteers. Very egear, my colleagues and Shauna shared the value of perseverance and productive feedback.

When identifying how feasible the project is now and how it will grow in the future I am hopeful because alliances will continue to build throughout the Rwandan community and differing needs will be addressed through peer support and academic guidance. During my first week at FXB I had the opportunity to go into the field/ village of Uganda and be apart of a community based volunteer (CBV) group discussion with Stephanie and Shauna . Here each participant shared a success and failure from their previous home visit, this is instrumental to the effectiveness of the home intervention because they were able to share and acknowledge each families experiences both good and bad

This summer I was able to travel to Rwanda to review their IPC systems and programs in local health centers and district hospitals. The experience was incredible. The work load was enough it allowed me to learn but not heavy enough that it restricted me from experiencing the culture and meeting the local people. I loved this program specifically because of the kindness of the people and the beauty of the country. I would recommend anyone considering traveling abroad to make a stop in Rwanda!

This was a very well organized program. We were expected to read documents on infection prevention and control before we arrived, our first week was spent at the University of Rwanda (UR) learning from professors and UR students, and our final two weeks were spent in health care settings applying our knowledge. Everything built on itself.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this experience was the relationships we made with the UR students. Kigali is also an amazing city with a lot to do in your free time.

Being part of GEI Vietnam crew on January was a thrilling experience overall. As I come from Turkey, a country culturally different than Vietnam in many ways, I was stoked to be there working with Vietnamese colleagues throughout. I would define the uniqueness of GEI Vietnam experience in a single word "eye-opening" in terms of its cultural interaction, international management and permanent influence features.

In academic terms, the program allowed me to learn how to manage International colleagues with different cultural dimensions. Working with Vietnamese participants helped us discover that we would need to adapt and adjust to a new business environment we faced. As we worked on the project, we were quite astonished by how Vietnamese do business, how much their communication manners differ and what priorities they do give to certain traits, as such Vietnamese value on formal greetings.

I would define the GEI Vietnam experience as influential, mainly because we had a tangible effect on an environment we would never have a chance to influence as individuals . As "influencers", we assessed the feeling of embrace and empathy for Vietnamese culture and society. GEI Vietnam experience was a like real life experiment, in the sense that we had the chance to observe how Vietnamese live, what they do in daily life and what they value. We watched a Vietnamese football match with our colleagues, did karaoke (pretty big thing in Vietnam!) and had some quality local food. I would say my favourite memory was celebrating the achievement of Vietnamese football team, who got 2nd in Asia Cup. We spent the whole night on the streets after the match, with flags and banners in our hands and rejoiced with Vietnamese crowd. The moments when we had high-fives with motorbikes passing by and seeing their smile on their face were quite emotional and timeless for me. As a result of 2 weeks with unique memories and challenges, I would certainly recommend this experience as a life-time opportunity to broaden one's mind.

I have attended the Business Consulting Vietnam Program when I was in semester break. The program brought me a new perspective which makes this experience unique. I noticed that people are social animals different than other species who are able to communicate effectively and build an ecosystem by using common language that we defined with trust between each other so the cooperation can take place without the need of any strict control mechanism even they don’t know each other very well. In a very small period, I and my Vietnamese friends handle the situation about one of the company (TS24 Corporation) whose customer is Vietnamese Government.

GEI gave us the main objective, topic, we analyzed the problem based on the GEI’s fundamental perspective and the information that we took from them. In the first few hours Coralie from GEI, help us to build a safe environment for all of the participants in the program which was excellent and very fun. When we get the background for the general conditions in Vietnam especially for developments in IT sector, we started to become deeper for our topic which is about the “Big Data”.

Next week, the topic is changed because we don’t have a deep IT knowledge to fix the coding problem by using a specific application. Then the project become almost a conducting their marketing strategy based on the few assumptions. The most moving part was we never lost our motivation, willingness to cooperate and effective organization with our Vietnamese friends and lastly we made it.

I was expecting the program will focus on service learning project but it was not a direct service learning Project which focuses on directly to the society and let us find out the real need of them. Instead, the problem was determined and there will be a positive effect on the society in a longer term. For a better and more effective process, we also shaped the problem according to the TS24 Corp’s needs. We practiced several transdisciplinary methodologies and methods more than I expected like Design Thinking. I believe, design thinking process was very interesting and also beneficial. We defined our objectives, stakeholders map process map, work plan which makes us clearer and more comfortable. Before the program I was not aware of shaking hands has a pivotal role for convincing people and also I was not expecting to learn the right way of shaking hands but Coralie taught us how to shake hands and proved it by real-life examples and videos. Vietnamese friends are more open-minded, friendly, respectful, smiling than I expected.

Vietnamese friends taught me many new things and they shared their culture and they make the project process funny. Vietnamese people are very smiling, respectful, excited and they can make empathy. In our leisure time, we usually went and explored new places like restaurants, museums, touristic places. My friend Huy became my new brother and we have a very close friendship with him. At the weekend we have gone to Mekong Delta and my roommate was Huy. He was very energetic and hospitable the whole time in Vietnam. He also bid farewell to me into the airport. Apart from that, my Vietnamese friends made me feel like living in my hometown Turkey. Luckily, we also watched Vietnam young national football team’s football match together with Huy and Vietnamese people in Mekong Delta. The team firstly participated Asian Championship and even they lost in the final, millions of people include me and Huy celebrated the huge success by dancing and shouting for the national team as if Turkish National Team get the European Championship.