After almost four weeks

It's been almost four weeks since I left Tirana for Pristina. All I can say is I have had absolutely great time in Pristina, the beautiful capital city of The Colony aka Republic of Kosovo. I want to say a big Thank You for the amazing people at Balkan Sunflowers for allowing me to come here and work for your fabulous organization. A good start - a good finish (or that's what I hope most!)

My time in Pristina has truly brought a radical change in my life: for the first time in many, many years I am waking up at seven in the morning to start working at half past eight. Come on, we all know how it is to be a student at a university with 24/7 library, how upsetting is that for almost anyone's sleeping patterns... Me no more a student, me no more allowed to sleep til midday. Almost every morning starts with a cup of coffee, usually Turkish coffee:

Enjoying the morning coffee at Ma Belle.

As usual, when moving into a new country, life will not be all about work, but also about adventures. So far I have visited quite a few places around The Colony, for example:

Just off Pristina is Gazimestan, the monument commemorating the Battle of
Kosovo that occurred back in 1389. The site is heavily guarded, which reveals
a lot about the extremely unstable security situation in The Colony.

Kosovska Mitrovica, a city infamous for being strictly divided into the Serb
North and Albanian South. In the picture there is the most famous landmark
of Mitrovica, St. Demetrius Church.

Mountains around the city of Pejë (or Pec) near the border of Montenegro.

Prizren, an old Ottoman city in Southern Kosovo. Kind of "Small Sarajevo",
do you agree?

For more photographs of The Colony and other places around the Balkans, please click the link below to visit my new Flickr account:

Elza Ivanovic "Finkinja"

Greetings from The Colony aka Kosovo

Roughly one week ago, I started a new phase in my life: I enrolled as an EVS (European Voluntary Services) participant to the Balkan Sunflowers an award-winning non-governmental organization based in Pristina, The Colony aka Kosovo. Those not so aware about this region might wonder why I call this country "The Colony". Just sit for a coffee and look out of the window: I swear you will see at least a couple of EULEX SUVs speeding on the streets and KFOR guys from various countries patrolling around. In every street corner, there is an office belonging to one of the many branches of EU, UN, NATO, EC, CoE, OSCE... During my time in Tirana, it was extremely rare to hear English in any public place; here, you cannot sit in a restaurant or coffee shop without hearing the conversations of some American wannabe world-saviours. Perhaps the fragile independence of The Colony is best exemplified by their flag (image courtesy to Wikipedia.org:

What does this resemble to you?

A perfect flag to illustrate the situation (image courtesy to Uncyclopedia.wikia.com. I could never have believed that I would use Uncyclopedia as a source in two subsequent blog postings!)

The Colony of the USA, Albania and Serbia. Only one thing is missing but nevermind,
it is already included in the "national flag" above.

Anyway: as I have said many times before, in order to become a professional world savior, I must be prepared to go through dozens and dozens of internships, voluntary placements, work trials... At worst case, one is offered an internship in a prestigious UN office at London, but with absolutely no pay, no even reimbursement for a small cup of disgusting filter coffee. Luckily, my situation is not so bad. I am grateful that being an EVS volunteer, I get food and accommodation paid, and on the top of that, I even get some pocket money! Yay! 

Yet, perhaps the best thing in my volunteering placement with the Balkan Sunflowers is the opportunity to apply my passion for social research. Even better, what I am currently conducting is basically action research, i.e. research for policy and advocacy purposes. As a over-enthusiastic former student of social sciences, I don't mind conducting research on topics such as A critical appraisal to the currently prevalent epistemology of intersectionalities among the post-positivist feminist approach to recuperation and reconciliation in a South-West Herzegovinian beekeeper community. However, as I wrote before, while aforementioned kind of research is always fun to do, we may have do wait for a while (a few decades...) before these findings will reach the big masses and the policymakers. 

Currently, I am involved in a couple of research projects canvassing the health and educational needs of the Romani, Ashkali and Egyptian communities of The Colony. While life in The Colony is hard for everyone (except for politicians, war profiteers and oligharcs), life is especially hard for the peoples of these three marginalized and discriminated communities. I hope that with our forthcoming research findings will be helpful towards achieving a small but remarkable step in the process of integrating the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities in the wider society of The Colony. This is what I really like: conducting research with a purpose, with a purpose that is likely to result in concrete and visible outcomes.

I will continue this blog by writing about my experiences as an EVS volunteer in The Colony: what I'm doing, what I've achieved, how I feel about all this. Besides, I will keep on writing about my applications for jobs, for internships, for PhD positions... I'm very, very likely to write tons of them (literally). But not yet - now that I've just started this volunteering placement, I deserve a small break from "Your application was very convincing but..."

Feeling part of the team with my very own teacup!

Exchange organizations: AIESEC

As a recent graduate, I have got into the phase of life consisting mainly of internships. Probably many of you agree, entry level jobs for graduates - especially in the field of humanitarian aid and development - have almost entirely disappeared, "thanks" to the over-supply of distinction level graduates from disciplines such as politics, sociology, anthropology with law, Chinese Studies, Central and South-East African with History of the Philosophy and Aesthetics of Ethnomusicology...

There are numerous organizations providing students and recent graduates with internship opportunities abroad. One of them is called AIESEC (sorry, nobody today can remember what the acronym stands for...) AIESEC is an unique exchange organization in the sense that it has no professional, paid staff but is completely run by students and recent graduates. My recent internship in Albania was organized by the relatively newly established AIESEC branch (local committee aka LC) of the European University of Tirana (UET). Because of the old age (established in the 1940s) and high number of members (30,000 or so) I had no doubt that AIESEC is a good and reputable body for organizing internship exchanges.

Yet, back in September 2013 when doing my research AIESEC as an organization and experiences of the past internship participants, I wondered why there was so little information available on this. I managed to find some feedback but they were mostly posted in various blogs that were usually directly associated with various AIESEC LCs. I did not manage to find any feedback page on AIESEC.org nor on the websites of the numerous local AIESEC committees. However, enthusiastic about the opportunity provided by the AIESEC UET and their partner CNELL (Center for Non-Formal Education and Lifelong Learning), I decided not to worry about the feedback issue too much. I went to Albania with positive attitude, looking forward to a great Life Changing Experience (as the AIESEC motto goes). My internship was going to last three months with the possibility to extend it further should this project "New Skills 4 New Jobs" at CNELL be a success.

My initial arrival to Albania went very smoothly. I was picked up by to members of the ICX (incoming exchange team) who introduced me to the work and to the city of Tirana. Thanks to my positiveness and my previous experience of traveling around the Balkans, I did not experience much cultural shock. First I lived together with the other intern in a student dormitory but two weeks later, the ICX boys found us a nice apartment. The AIESEC leaders and organized introduced me and the intern to Tirana, and we would quickly become familiar with the city and its best offerings.

Back to my actual internship: I came to Albania in order to start my working career, in order to gain professional experience in the field of social research. However, the project "New Skills 4 New Jobs" turned out to be a complete disaster. While AIESEC UET had managed to gain interns to teach accounting and social research (me), they were still lacking trainers of graphic design and programming. Problematically, the latter two would have been the most profitable courses but in absence of the trainers, these courses were postponed. However, what was even worse, as soon as I started my internship at CNELL, I found out that 1) I would not have much work: only four hours of teaching in a week and 2) I had very few students and hence, I would be unable to carry out my proposed mini-research project. Later, I also started to run classes in academic English but there was never too much interest for this course either; after the Christmas break, I taught a couple of English classes a week and this was basically all the work I had. Not so much an opportunity to gain professional experience that I had so much wanted.

Moreover, even though AIESEC UET and CNELL finally managed to get an intern to teach graphic design, they never found anyone for programming. The revenue we collected from the ongoing courses was not enough for paying the salaries for me and the two other interns. I have already finished my internship but I am still waiting for my salary...

Because of the mess with my internship, I have became very sceptical towards the work of AIESEC. Many questions have come to my mind. For example, if AIESEC is really the largest student-run organization in the world, how come majority of my fellow students have never heard about it? As I already mentioned above, why is it so difficult to find any impartial feedback regarding the AIESEC experiences? What is the AIESEC policy on dealing with complaints and dissatisfied customers? I have paid AIESEC a comsiderable sum of money in order to participate in an internship: I have thus all rights to call myself their customer.

I appreciate the work of AIESEC UET: I am impressed to see young people working hard to fulfill the dreams and potential of themselves and the others. Hence, I don't want to be too harsh with my criticism of AIESEC. In order to improve your services and get most out of your work, I suggest AIESEC to consider certain improvements.


Firstly, my recommendations especially for AIESEC Albania:

• I know that AIESEC is very idealistic: you are working hard to increase peace, tolerance and friendliness between the nations. However, when it goes to people wanting to gain professional experience abroad, I recommend you to remove your rose colored glasses. There are not many graduates of computing science who would come to teach programming in Albania for 200 euros when at the same time, they could earn more than 5000 euros at home. In short: be realistic when considering what kind of interns you will need for your projects. 
• At this early stage of your existence, concentrate on the social internship. With these, you will not have to worry about the salaries. Also, as far as I'm concerned, social internships are more about having fun than gaining serious working experience. Hence, you would not have to worry about the participants complaining that their internship was useless for their CVs.
• Whenever you decide to have a project, make sure the project will 1) really exist and 2) the interns will have something meaningful to do. Make sure that the tasks will match the initial work description. Nothing is more frustrating than invest a lot for an internship abroad, only to find out that you end up having nothing to do. 
• Should you again proceed to do such an ambitious project as "New Skills 4 New Jobs", you should consider "training the trainers". Neither I nor my fellow interns had much teaching experience; hence, if there is something particular you would like the interns to cover in the classes, you should be prepared to provide at least some orientation to the work. For example, some AIESEC teams in China provide the interns with an opportunity to gain TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) qualifications before starting the actual teaching. 

My recommendations for AIESEC as an organization:

• Many exchange providers, for example Projects Abroad, provide online feedback forms on which each exchange participants can share their experiences. I would ask AIESEC to kindly add such a feedback page on AIESEC.org and preferably also on the sites of local committees. Any exchange partner or an AIESEC member should be able to leave a feedback. Very importantly, all feedback should be available to the public. Please do not censor or moderate the feedback unless completely inappropriate or irrelevant.
• Typically, exchange providers working across the countries will have some kind of brand standards to ensure the quality of the service. With AIESEC, this does not seem to be the case at all. For example, we can see some horror stories regarding the accommodation conditions in India. What AIESEC should do is to ensure that some minimal standards are being met especially when it goes to the character of the work. When you are providing professional internship for leadership development, you should carefully consider, whether these two aspects are fulfilled in each project.  
• Also, other exchange providers, for example European Voluntary Service (EVS) provide a detailed breakdown of all the costs a participant is paying for the organization. I paid AIESEC £350 in order to access the internship database but I have not seen any elaboration how this money is being used. No, I don't believe that AIESEC really, really has to charge such a high amount from each of the tens of thousands participants in order to maintain their website.
• I understand that AIESEC is working hard to keep the tradition of being completely run by students. Maybe this was possible at the early years of AIESEC when the number of members and exchange participants was much lower was now. However, considering that nowadays AIESEC arranges tens of thousands of internships, would be really advantageous if you could have some permanent, professional, paid staff in each location to ensure things will go as planned.
• Moreover, it is a bit exaggeration and definitely old-fashioned to call the AIESEC leaders presidents. According to AIESEC, if you are in charge of about seven people, you are a vice president. If you are in charge of twenty people, you are a president. I even came across with an AIESEC leader calling himself a CoE!

Finally, after attending a couple of AIESEC events, including the national conference in Albania, I found out that internship appear not to be the main concern of AIESEC,. Rather, the main concern is recruiting the members and practicing the "AIESEC culture." (Sorry for linking to Uncyclopedia but in this case, I think the article is a perfect description of this phenomenon...) Yes, I understand that in certain countries, AIESEC has established its place as a reputable employment agent, providing interns for large corporations such as DHL, UPS and PwC. Yet, these new and still fragile branches of AIESEC, including those in Tirana, should not try to ride on the reputation of some other old, successful and prestigious branches. That's why, what I urgently require from AIESEC as a whole, is setting up brand standards that are also vigorously enforced. This way you can best establish your place as a reputable, reliable and respectable exchange organizatoin.

After three months: some thoughts about Albania

Can't believe that almost three months has passed since my arrival to Albania. My big project here has come to an end meaning it is now time to move onward and pursue for more radical changes in my life. Now that I have spent three months here, I feel like sharing some of my thoughts about Albania and Tirana.

Only in Albania...

...one can get their daily excercise when taking the rubbish out. Actually, this is the first place where people use public rubbish bins as a landmark: "Do you know that coffee shop near the rubbish bins..."

...one can (and sometimes must) reserve a table in a COFFEE SHOP.

...I find myself buying L and XL size clothes.

...I am not the only one who likes to wear hair on a ballet bun.

...each coffee shop, restaurant and bar has their own strict rules about expressing love. While in some places mere kissing is strictly forbidden, in other, otherwise similar places one can see public foreplaying.

...waiter will run from the other end of a coffee shop/restaurant/bar to open you the door. How kind! In general, Albanian customer service personnel are extremely polite and ready to help you at all situations.

...unlike in the other Balkan countries, people of different religions are not simly coexisting but actually cohabitating with each other. I have actually met quite a few multi-religious families. Go Albania, show example to the neighbors!

...This is also the first Balkan capital where I haven't been ripped of by the taxi drivers.

As you can see, quite a few of my reflections are related to the coffee shops. I have spent hours and hours using the internet in coffee shops. I'm now quite used to drinking at least three cups of coffee every day. How on earth can I continue this lifestyle if I ever decide to return to London or some other dead expensive European city?

"Caricature of an Albanian": big, messy bun, dark purple lipstick and cat eyes.
Do you agree with my caricature? ;)

Actually, I've also got a lot to say about my job and project here. However, in order not to ruin my last day in Albania, I will write more about these experiences a bit later. Probably everyone knows that things never go exactly as planned. All I can say that rather often, nothing goes as planned. Better to remember this simple fact of life especially when pursuing for a radical change abroad.