As I finish my internship, I want to thank the McGill International Experience Awards founders and Mr. Garvin Brown, for their generosity and support that allowed me to live a truly life-changing experience in the past months. My name is Kasem Alhaeik, I am currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Political Science with an option in Development Studies, and I conducted an internship at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in summer 2022. Growing up in the Syrian city of Salamieh, I witnessed first-hand some international development initiatives. Furthermore, I have had the chance to do a few internships in the field of international development with local NGOs in Togo and Peru. I saw the failures and successes of development programs which confirmed my desire to study and work in that field. My goal is to contribute to improving development initiatives around the world that support the most vulnerable and ensure better opportunities for all.
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While I had the chance to pursue extremely rich learning experiences, I wanted to explore development work from the perspective of actors in the development field: international organizations. Through this experience, I wanted to develop a better understanding of the ways in which these organizations work and gain valuable communication and analytical skills.
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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, mainly high-income democracies. The organization works on a very wide variety of subjects to compare policy experiences, identify best practices and ensure better coordination between members to solve common problems. In short, as the organization's mission statement states, its goal is to promote 鈥渂etter policies for better lives.鈥� Precisely, I worked over the past months with the Development Co-operation directorate which supports the Development Assistance Committee, an international forum of discussion and coordination on development aid policies and initiatives.
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During my internship with the Evaluation Team, I had multiple responsibilities associated with my role. As such, most importantly, I supported the organization of two major events and two different evaluation studies related to development evaluation. I supported the organization of the Development Assistance Committee Evaluation Network meeting, a hybrid three-day event that convened development evaluation team leaders from all member countries to discuss development evaluation topics and share new initiatives and best practices. I did a variety of tasks but most significantly, I did a presentation on one of the team鈥檚 new initiatives to gather financial support for the project from member countries. Secondly, I supported the final steps of the Joint Evaluation for the protection of the Rights of Refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic. My role included supporting the design and translation processes, political communication of major findings in different languages, and preparing report launch events in collaboration with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Thirdly, I supported a new initiative of country-led evaluation, a partnership with the World Bank to empower countries to lead evaluations on their response to COVID-19. My focus was working on the early step of a country-led evaluation of Burkina Faso鈥檚 response to the pandemic. Finally, I did some data consolidation tasks to support the Evaluation System Study 2022, a quinquennial study that offers a portrait of all member countries' development evaluation systems to identify and highlight the best emerging practices and trends.
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The main highlight of the internship was working on a subject that is particularly important to me: refugee protection. Participating in the launch of an evaluation report on the ways the pandemic affected refugees to ensure better protection of refugees in future crises was really a unique opportunity. Moreover, the internship was made exceptional by all the people I had the chance to meet and exchange with. On the first hand, I met incredible interns from all over the world and made new friendships that I will cherish for years to come. I also had the chance to exchange with senior employees who shared with me their incredible experiences working at different international organizations and I will certainly benefit from these experiences in my professional career. On the other hand, being in France for a few months allowed me to reconnect with childhood friends and people from the Syrian community who sought asylum and established themselves in France. Building theses new connections is undoubtedly the most significant and unexpected highlight of my Paris experience.
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I believe the internship contributed significantly to my university experience. Overall, it gave me a great introduction to international organizations and precisely to development work in these organizations. This funding allowed me to cover my travel and living expenses in Paris. Being physically in Paris for the duration of the internship has been an amazing opportunity. It allowed me to discover the very cultural scene of the city, to build strong connections with my colleagues and to make friendships all while having a great work experience.
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Thank you to the MIEA founders, and Mr. Gavin Brown for making this experience possible!
