Junior Sharfi Farhana (West Haven, Mass.) used to spend a lot of time in Bangladesh when she was younger. Returning for a wedding last Christmas, she looked at the familiar landscape with new eyes. After several years at an affluent Western college, Farhana noticed that the poverty, the lack of opportunity, the pollution all stood out. "You see that when you've had two years of liberal arts education," Farhana said.
Farhana, currently pursing a double major in anthropology and biology, put her own liberal arts background to work this summer as an intern for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the largest NGO in the world. Farhana was hired by BRAC's head office in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she did both office work and an extensive research project with the Tuberculosis Program.
Farhana was one of more than 20 Hamiltonians who received college funding to participate in a summer internship. Work experience is becoming more and more necessary for college students, but many opportunities are unpaid and require students to fund their own housing and living expenses as well as working for free.
Thanks to alumni and parent donations, Hamilton students can apply for funding to support them while they work in a field of interest with an organization that cannot pay them. Though Farhana worked in an unpaid internship, she received a stipend from Hamilton's competitive Jeffrey Fund, which provides money to one or two students for a full-time, summer, off-campus internship in the sciences.
Farhana got a taste of most of BRAC's projects, from field work to administrative tasks. She was invited to submit a research proposal and chose to focus on popular theater as a means of health education, mostly because there was very little previous research. Offered the chance to carry out her proposal, Farhana accepted and embarked upon a rural adventure complete with mud, car emergencies, and goats.
BRAC is involved with the production of community plays as a way of informing people about tuberculosis. A community coordinator for a group of villages will recruit volunteer actors who then dramatize a situation from their village regarding tuberculosis or the prevention thereof. "So something like that actually happened," explained Farhana, who had attended several performances. "It hits really close to home." These witty, song and dance productions were enjoyable as well as didactic, she added.
The project itself was a test of the efficacy of popular theater both quantitatively and qualitatively. For the former, Farhana analyzed data from local sputum collection stations and calculated whether there had been an increase in submitted samples after the advent of area popular theater. To test the program qualitatively, Farhana organized a number of discussions; some 90 intensive, one-on-one interviews and six focus group sessions where she interacted with groups of eight to ten and encouraged them to speak about their feelings and experiences regarding tuberculosis. "I wanted to understand what was the best form of communicating and I realized it was popular theater," said Farhana, whose data did prove a positive correlation between theater and confidence regarding tuberculosis.
Intern positions are recognized as providing hands-on experience in the field and Farhana found this to be absolutely true. During her summer in Bangladesh, Farhana earned first-hand experience in dealing with monsoon rains, mud, broken cars, and many other things. "This is the kind of job I want," she said. Well-prepared in research after two years of summer work at Hamilton, Farhana was excited to interact with people and mesh her two interests in anthropology and biology. "It wasn't easy," she said, "and I was scared I wouldn't be able to do it, but it's fulfilling. I had a great time."
Of the experience overall, Farhana said, "it's an adventure." To other students interested in "adventures" (or internships), Farhana's advice was strongly informed by her own experience this summer. "Try to do whatever you want," she emphasized, "because actively doing is the most effective way of learning yourself."
Farhana will spend this year as the advertising editor of The Spectator. An active and vocal participant in IM sports, she has been appointed to the recently-formed IM Committee, a group which will work with the IM sports program to make it a more organized structure. Future plans include graduate school in public health and more work in NGOs.
-- by Lisbeth Redfield
Farhana, currently pursing a double major in anthropology and biology, put her own liberal arts background to work this summer as an intern for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the largest NGO in the world. Farhana was hired by BRAC's head office in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she did both office work and an extensive research project with the Tuberculosis Program.
Farhana was one of more than 20 Hamiltonians who received college funding to participate in a summer internship. Work experience is becoming more and more necessary for college students, but many opportunities are unpaid and require students to fund their own housing and living expenses as well as working for free.
Thanks to alumni and parent donations, Hamilton students can apply for funding to support them while they work in a field of interest with an organization that cannot pay them. Though Farhana worked in an unpaid internship, she received a stipend from Hamilton's competitive Jeffrey Fund, which provides money to one or two students for a full-time, summer, off-campus internship in the sciences.
Farhana got a taste of most of BRAC's projects, from field work to administrative tasks. She was invited to submit a research proposal and chose to focus on popular theater as a means of health education, mostly because there was very little previous research. Offered the chance to carry out her proposal, Farhana accepted and embarked upon a rural adventure complete with mud, car emergencies, and goats.
BRAC is involved with the production of community plays as a way of informing people about tuberculosis. A community coordinator for a group of villages will recruit volunteer actors who then dramatize a situation from their village regarding tuberculosis or the prevention thereof. "So something like that actually happened," explained Farhana, who had attended several performances. "It hits really close to home." These witty, song and dance productions were enjoyable as well as didactic, she added.
The project itself was a test of the efficacy of popular theater both quantitatively and qualitatively. For the former, Farhana analyzed data from local sputum collection stations and calculated whether there had been an increase in submitted samples after the advent of area popular theater. To test the program qualitatively, Farhana organized a number of discussions; some 90 intensive, one-on-one interviews and six focus group sessions where she interacted with groups of eight to ten and encouraged them to speak about their feelings and experiences regarding tuberculosis. "I wanted to understand what was the best form of communicating and I realized it was popular theater," said Farhana, whose data did prove a positive correlation between theater and confidence regarding tuberculosis.
Intern positions are recognized as providing hands-on experience in the field and Farhana found this to be absolutely true. During her summer in Bangladesh, Farhana earned first-hand experience in dealing with monsoon rains, mud, broken cars, and many other things. "This is the kind of job I want," she said. Well-prepared in research after two years of summer work at Hamilton, Farhana was excited to interact with people and mesh her two interests in anthropology and biology. "It wasn't easy," she said, "and I was scared I wouldn't be able to do it, but it's fulfilling. I had a great time."
Of the experience overall, Farhana said, "it's an adventure." To other students interested in "adventures" (or internships), Farhana's advice was strongly informed by her own experience this summer. "Try to do whatever you want," she emphasized, "because actively doing is the most effective way of learning yourself."
Farhana will spend this year as the advertising editor of The Spectator. An active and vocal participant in IM sports, she has been appointed to the recently-formed IM Committee, a group which will work with the IM sports program to make it a more organized structure. Future plans include graduate school in public health and more work in NGOs.
-- by Lisbeth Redfield
