FIN INTERNS / TRAINEES 2025

Sharmili J, Sai Mahima R, Dr Neha Karnawadi and Soundhar Rajan from Jss academy of higher education and research mysuru – 01st Feb 2025 to 31st May 2025

1. Pitch to the community on why beaches should be clean
2. Material for workshops to keep beaches clean
3. Self-video with English transcription for spoken English class for college graduates
4. English translation of FIN Tamil videos

FIN INTERNS / TRAINEES 2024

Shannen Smith Boore, Christopher Kenny, George Byrne from Engineers without Borders – October 2024

1. Developed a low-cost heat-based cutting tool using locally available materials.

2. Solved the challenge of making uniform holes in foam panels for the hydroponic system.

3. Used traditional fire and natural fuel (palm leaves & coconut husks) to operate the tool effectively.

4. Improved speed, accuracy, and cleanliness in preparing foam panels for planting bottles.

5. Created a solution that is easy for villagers to replicate, supporting sustainable local maintenance and scaling.

Suyash Tripathi – 05th Feb 2024 – 02 July 2024

1. Assisting in community development and social upliftment activities under FIN.

2. Helping in research and project assistance for ongoing FIN initiatives.

3. Contributing to youth-focused and educational outreach activities.

Amy Koehn – 05th Feb 2024 – 02 July 2024

1. Conducting research on youth perceptions and behaviours toward environmental challenges and sustainability, comparing European and Indian students.

2. Collecting data through an online survey targeting individuals aged 18–24

3. Analyse findings and present the results in a webinar

Federica Balia – 08th April 2024 – 22 May 2024

1. Creating and managing a survey 

2. Tracing and contacting former interns

3. Analyzing the collected responses

Sourish Dey   19th Feb 2024 – 2nd July, 2024

1. Creates social media content and develops Wikipedia pages for FIN and Kameswaram village.
2. Assists in research on plastic waste management to support a circular economy.
3. Works on his thesis analyzing the link between wealth and health outcomes in Kameswaram using FIN’s household data.
4. Contributes to FIN’s projects through regular analysis, documentation, and coordination under senior mentors.

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

Top row left to right – Chandra Sekharan.S, Sabari Santosh S, Sivaraman Santhanam, and Swetha Ravichandran

Bottom row left to right – Shreyas Seshadri, Shrinaath M, Chockalingam Harisankar, and Srinathji M

These students worked with us on Digital literacy, Digital inequalities, coaching for project management with Rural Lab staff for the next few months, and the project faculty mentor from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad is Prof Amrita Kamalini Bhattacharyya, Assistant Professor, Economic Environment and Policy. In terms of community outreach – they improved the digital literacy of our village rural lab members and the senior members of FIN. Here’s their introduction video in English!

https://youtu.be/utt8gWrM68o

What we really appreciate – our rural lab being located in Tamil Nadu – is that they also agreed to do a video of self-introduction for us in Tamil – Here it is! https://youtube/tZcFH7tVWvw

2021

Dorina Crivat

Dorina is from France and she has been interning at FIN India Trust since January 2021. She will finish her internship in June. Her tasks during the programme have included:

• Event management supports for International Women Day and World Water Day
• Participate in the P2: FIN fusion program by helping for the writing of a policy brief on COVID-19
• Part of the team that co-designed the Center for Circular Economy Website
• Interviewed the other interns on their experiences in FIN
• Make presentations for different purposes (articles on Ireland’s waste management)
• Part of UN AMI project, a French association: design a website and do some translation French-English
• Host of guest speakers for the “SITETalks” of SITE4Society
• Participate in the rebranding of the social media of FIN and SITE4society

You can learn more about Dorina by listening to our first episode of the CCESeers podcast. The episode is also available in video podcast.

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 –

1. Testing of Emergency Helpline numbers in India with descriptive analysis
2. Transform the analysis into user friendly format for ready recognition in a poster
3. Quiz with Kameswaram staff to ascertain awareness and strengthen it
4. Documentation of weekly progress of FIN Kameswaram staff
5. Compilation of relevant news of the village supplied by the FIN Kameswaram staff
6. Organisation of  Facebook posts of FIN Trust reporting on the activities and progress made of the team for its annual report
7. Participation in a podcast
8. Translated selected questions of World Toilet Day quiz from English to Tamil
9. Social Media Post for World Toilet Day
10. Research via internet of the Government Programme ‘Jal Shakthi Abhiyaan’  of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation
11. Research via internet of the Government Programme ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’  of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation
12. Documentation to answer given questions in power-point with translation into Tamil
13. Compilation of database in excel base on relevant documents related to the above programs
14. 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 –

1. Testing of Emergency Helpline numbers in India with descriptive analysis.
2. Quiz with Kameswaram staff to ascertain awareness and strengthen it.
3. Support Material for Spoken English Classes in the form of games for FIN Kameswaram team.
4. Brochure for Spoken English Classes for FIN Kameswaram team.
5. Participation in a podcast.
6. Social Media Post for World Toilet Day.
7. 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 –

1. Documentation Support of Annual Toilet Review with analysis of performance
2. Documentation support to transform information gathered by FIN staff into database
3. Documentation support to copy edit information gathered by FIN staff into reports
4. Translation of FIN reports from Tamil to English

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2020

Jairaj Gopalakrishnan

Jairaj is an Indian, born and brought up in the Middle-East, and has been an intern at FIN India Trust from January 2020 until May 2021. His tasks during the programme have included:

• Research and creation of content for  modules of the Green Schools Academy, a middle school education module on Waste Management which is now active in Accra, Ghana
• Aided in research and development of a COVID-19 Global Awareness Campaign information leaflet
• Creation of social media engagement through posts about the P2: FIN Fusion collaboration programme
• Research and presentation of findings for “Desalination: A potential solution for Water Scarcity” at the World Water Day event 2021.
• Event management experience gained while organizing the World Water Day event
• Part of the team that designed the Center for Circular Economy Website.
• Research and writing on different topics related to waste management and sustainability education. This includes:
  • Sambhav Garden – Interventions in repurposing a landfill in Madhya Pradesh by Fusion Waste Management:
  • Successfully repurposing a Landfill – Ariel Shannon Park, Tel Aviv, Israel & Sai Tso Wan Eco-Park, Hong Kong
  • Why is Education for Sustainable Development required in schools and how will it benefit? A cost-benefit exploration

You can learn more about Jairaj by listening to our first episode of the CCESeers podcast. The episode is also available in video podcast.

Cristina García Santos

Cristina is from Spain and she has been an intern at FIN India Trust from October 2020 until May 2021. Her tasks during the programme have included:

• Creation of social media engagement through posts about the P2 programme, the FIN-Fusion collaboration, and the SDGs and targets related to the project
• Collaborate in writing the World Toilet Day report
• Make presentations for different purposes (FIN quiz, article on NY’s waste issue, case study on Ireland’s waste management)
• Helping with the registrations on World Water Day
• Co-design the Center for Circular Economy website as part of a team
• Research and writing on different topics related to waste management. She has written blogs about:
• • Plastics and Sustainable Development: What India is doing about it
  • From Accra to India: the story of how Trashy Bags is motivating behavioural change in an Indian village
  • All that glitters may not be gold: The difficulty of contrasting data

You can learn more about Cristina by listening to our first episode of the CCESeers podcast. The episode is also available in video podcast.

FIN Interns from 2005-2022

Take a look at the students and volunteers who have participated in FIN programmes since 2005.

2022: FIN-Interns-2022

2021: FIN-Interns-2021 & CCE-Seers-2021

2020: FIN-Interns-2020

2019: FIN-Interns-2019

2018: FIN-Interns-2018

Since 2016, we have been requesting our interns to introduce themselves to all of us – read on and get to know them!

2016-17: FIN Interns 2016-2017

2005-2015: FIN Volunteers  2005-2015