FIN INTERNS / TRAINEES 2024
Joyleena Bhattacharyya 1st October, 2023 – 30th January, 2024
1. Created educational materials for eight chapters in FIN’s Digital skilling program (covering introduction to computers and computer applications)
2. Worked on FIN’s World Toilet Day educational materials
3. Conducted an online World Toilet Day quiz
4. Wrote a blog-report on the internship
5. Participated in FIN’s internship marketing
FIN INTERNS / TRAINEES 2023
Team Water and Sanitation from the University of Southern California (Project RISHI)
Project Title: Exploring solution designs for water challenges in Kameswaram
April 2023-April 2024
Lavanya VG and Mahendran N
June 1- June 24, 2023
- Conducted communication tests for FIN staff and graded them. Then coached them on how to do it better.
- Conducted surveys of the four functioning Anganwadis in Kameswaram village.
- Wrote a report on the educational material at Anganwadi level.
- Wrote a report on the history of Kameswaram village and temple.
- Designed a questionnaire to get people’s opinions on Kameswaram life quality and governance in the future.
- Report on Primary Health Care Centre in Thirupoondi and the services it offers.
“I got exposure to rural setting for the first time in my life and my transformation was to learn to adapt to it and empathise with the FIN staff and Kameswaram residents.” Lavanya V.G.
“My transformation was to get into the habit of creating a routine of tasks to finish and implementing the set programme.” Mahendran N.
Jubin Thomas Kuriakose
May-June 2023
- Teaching the rules of basic sports like cricket, football, kickball, seven stones etc. to the FIN Rural Lab staff.
- Held meetings every day with FIN Rural Lab staff to help them plan their work.
- Started the series “People of Kameswaram” with an interview of the Panchayat Secretary.
- Made a video on FIN past, present and future.
- Helped to write reports on progress of a CSR sanitation project.
- Wrote blogs on FIN Rural Lab events for social media.
- Compiled data on Swacchh Bharat Policy and also conducted research on data sources for same for Nagapattinam district. .
“FIN has taught me the importance of reinforcement learning. Earlier I just used to learn, but I didn’t really have opportunities to test and reflect on my learning. Here, with constant feedback I was able to reinforce and strengthen my understanding.”
Training: National Institute of Technology Puducherry
January 2023 – April 2023
- There are a total of 8 students trained of the National Institute of Technology Puducherry in 2023.
- The names of the students are:-
Ayushi Yadhuvanshi M Dhanvantraj M Nithin Jubin Thomas Kuriakose P Dharun Ram Sarathy Saanghwi Patel Shaikh Fardeen Ahmed Pasha Sahil Bansal
Binod Kumar
Feburary 2023 – April 2023
- FIN Digital skilling course development
- Facebook compilation of the first 6 Months of FIN India Trust
- Research for different government certifications and schemes
Ayush Kumar
May 2023 – July 2023
- FIN Digital skilling course development
- Facebook compilation of the first 6 Months of FIN India Trust
- Research for government CSR Bodies and government schemes
Pranav Shankar Kaundinya
January 2023 – present
- Organization of World Water Day Event
- Quiz Master for World Water Day Event
- Feedback on MOOC and frugal innovation projects of Engineers Without Borders Ireland
- Preparing promotional materials for FIN’s course – Skilling for Sustainability and Employability
- Tweeting for FIN – as Tweet Master of FIN
“FIN seems to connect so many seemingly unrelated people doing very different things and somehow gets them under one banner. And much of this is entirely voluntary which is beautiful to see/experience because the only other time I had such an environment was in the Singapore military where it was top down and forced. And the more I hear from everyone at FIN, the easier it is to observe the complexity of what we try to address (ie. sanitation for example). All your stories are so fascinating because of the variety of people you talk to. You introduce us to challenges we do not even know exist (such as the low diffusion of Ecosan) and so what I have learnt from all this is: Some of the most complex problems can be addressed by bringing together decision-makers and stakeholders to talk openly.”
+++We also had 3 students from the UPES Dehradun and worked with Engineering Without Borders to give feedback on projects of students of Irish Engineering Colleges (National College of Arts and Design (NCAD); Trinity College, Dublin; Dublin City University; Atlantic Technology University (ATU), Galway and Technological University (TU), Dublin).
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FIN INTERNS / TRAINEES 2022
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad (8)
January 15, 2022 – March 15, 2022
United World College (UWC) Maastricht International School (2)
Two school students Anna Matsuzawa and Anna, Saimi Hartikainen worked for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. They conducted a survey on the problems faced by school students during periods and presented their results at the event.
University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES) (4)
Yadrishi Dixit, Elanagai Arivuchelvan, Joseph Zacarias, and Jerem Lee from UPES worked on four tracks: Digital Empathy, Research on Apps, Personality Development, and Workshops. Elanagai came up with the concept of “Webiz” for a workshop – a webinar with a quiz, which was a great success. As part of the preparation for the event, the interns also developed a presentation about the swachhta app.
School of Economics and Business, Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT (3)
Lotte Albers and Anneke Hasselmann were final year Bachelors students from the School of Economics and Business, Maastricht University, who joined us as interns. Nikhil MP (Muraleedharan Pakkattil) from the Masters Program at UNU-MERIT was their supervisor. TThey made database on twitter user in the area of sanitation and water, which they analysed to identify the most popular and effective hashtags in the Twitter space. Additionally, worked on material on Kameswaram to update its Wikipedia page, and attempted a page on FIN itself as well. Finally, they combined this with writing their dissertation which drew upon the Indian context. Their twitter database was excellent.
Engineers without Borders (EWB) Ireland (180)
“Where There Is No Engineer” (WTINE) is coordinated by Engineers without Borders Ireland and the Development Technology in the Community (DTC) Research Group in TU Dublin. This education initiative provides students with the opportunity to learn about design, teamwork, and communication through real, inspiring, sustainable, and cross-cultural development projects. By participating in the programme, students can design creative solutions to real life development challenges. The programme ends with students submitting proposals in a nationwide competition that is jointly funded by Irish Aid at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Bentley Systems, and the Arup Trust. Students had the opportunity to design a development solution for Kameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India in collaboration with Friend In Need India Trust (FIN). The collaboration with FIN focused on improving the design and user experience of ecosan toilets and the development of a Green Academy incorporating circular economy principles for architecture students.
FIN INTERNS 2021
ALL THINGS DIGITAL!
FIN has started a series of theme based internships, which impact sustainability. The first to be rolled out in this series was the ‘ALL THINGS DIGITAL’ during June-July 2021. This internship was offered to a set of interns from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, Uttarakhand and also to earlier FIN interns interested in the topic.
The ‘ALL THINGS DIGITAL’ internship included four tracks: Digital policy, Skilling for Digital world, Digital Empathy, and Digital Empowerment.
The internship aimed to make students more aware of the potential of our digitally transformed world and improve their research and science communication skills. It was also designed to help them build empathy and develop employer-valued skills such as effective teamwork and time management.
What did they get from the internship? Hear our interns : Kirti Chandani (00:08-00:32) , Parag Samant (00:33-00:59), Kshitij Singh (01:00-01:35), Manav Bhatia (01:36-02:05), Akshita Kapoor (02:06-02:40) and Abhishek Pathak (02:46-03:10).
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Jayashree J.
- September 1, 2021 – September 30, 2021
- Madras School of Social Work with specialisation in Community Development
- Part of Academic Collaboration with Madras School of Social Work
“Daily interaction with feedback was extremely useful for learning and very motivating.”
Completed work –
- Testing of Emergency Helpline numbers in India with descriptive analysis
- Transform the analysis into user friendly format for ready recognition in a poster
- Quiz with Kameswaram staff to ascertain awareness and strengthen it
- Documentation of weekly progress of FIN Kameswaram staff
- Compilation of relevant news of the village supplied by the FIN Kameswaram staff
- Organisation of Facebook posts of FIN Trust reporting on the activities and progress made of the team for its annual report
- Participation in a podcast
- Translated selected questions of World Toilet Day quiz from English to Tamil
- Social Media Post for World Toilet Day
- Research via internet of the Government Programme ‘Jal Shakthi Abhiyaan’ of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation
- Research via internet of the Government Programme ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’ of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation
- Documentation to answer given questions in power-point with translation into Tamil
- Compilation of database in excel base on relevant documents related to the above programs
- Poster for World Toilet Day.
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Mokshavathi
- September 1, 2021 – September 30, 2021
- Madras School of Social Work with specialisation in Community Development
- Part of Academic Collaboration with Madras School of Social Work
“Challenging learnings were everyday’s take away.”
Completed work –
- Testing of Emergency Helpline numbers in India with descriptive analysis.
- Quiz with Kameswaram staff to ascertain awareness and strengthen it.
- Support Material for Spoken English Classes in the form of games for FIN Kameswaram team.
- Brochure for Spoken English Classes for FIN Kameswaram team.
- Participation in a podcast.
- Social Media Post for World Toilet Day.
- Powerpoint on what MSSW is and its different departments.
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Hirthikraj R
- March 1, 2021 to August 20, 2021
- Easwari engineering college, Chennai
“It was fascinating to learn first hand how development of a village is worked upon by an NGO like FIN. I am of a helping mentality and this showed me how a community can be helped”
Completed work –
- Documentation Support of Annual Toilet Review with analysis of performance
- Documentation support to transform information gathered by FIN staff into database
- Documentation support to copy edit information gathered by FIN staff into reports
- Translation of FIN reports from Tamil to English
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