Hannah Schiff

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Hannah Schiff

Country: India
Organization: Start Up! India

Hannah Schiff’s work included in-person interviews with villagers, experts in the field, and other social entrepreneurs as well as exposure to a wide variety of social enterprise models. She gained experience helping social enterprises define smart business strategies and processes and created questionnaires, guides and other content for Start Up! India’s Incubation Tool Kit.

Hannah : “This was a powerful internship through which I gained many insights that will be useful in my academic and career decisions going forward. The experience helped me to refine my idea of what I am looking for in a future work environment.”

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Sarah Ryan

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Sarah Ryan

Sarah Ryan focused on the Fundacion’s reading glasses microfranchise and investigated new microfranchise opportunities for FP. She was able to meet with microfranchises, loan officers, and potential suppliers. Her business plan suggesting strategic changes in order to grow sales and expand the number of vendors was presented to the directors.

Sarah: “It was extremely useful to get on-the-ground experience in a developing country… and to understand the cultural differences which impact the speed and implementation of new operational models.”

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Kyle Muther

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Kyle Muther

Kyle Muther conducted a value chain analysis of four selected commodities in Uganda and Indonesia to identify market opportunities for bundling farm and crop management tools and financial services on mobile platforms. He attended meetings of the Indonesia World Economic Forum working group on Maize.

Kyle: “The internship was very useful for my career development… with a lot of interaction with high level MercyCorps staff. My main accomplishment during the summer was getting exposure to an exciting field – mobile agriculture information services and mobile money/banking.”

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Max Mattern

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Max Mattern had responsibility for implementation of a survey of FINCA Jordan clients. FINCA is an international microfinance institution with a mission to provide financial services to the world’s lowest income entrepreneurs and so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living.

In this capacity Max designed the sample and survey strategy, hired trained and managed a team of five surveyors located throughout Jordan. He performed an analysis of the social performance indicators and wrote a report and presented his findings to the CEO of FINCA. The findings will be used to set poverty outreach targets and improve products and services.

Max: “Overall, the internship was an invaluable experience that will surely advance my career goals. I can confidently say that have experience managing a complex proess that employed logistical and analytical skills, as well as personnel management. …I now feel confident that I have the knowledge and skills necessary to begin a successful career in microfinance after graduation.”

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Liz Henry

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Liz Henry

Country: Ecuador
Organization: Root Capital

Liz Henry was assigned by Root Capital’s office in Lima, Peru to investigate and formulate a plan for expanding its loan activity into Ecuador. Using her Spanish language she was able to engage with diverse stakeholders, include personnel international: agencies such as USAID and NGOs such as Catholic Relief Services, directors at the Inter-American Development Bank, representatives from commodity trading firms, employees and consultants at Ecuadorian government ministries, CEOs of SMEs and rural cacao and coffee farmers

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Bernardo Goriupp

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Bernardo Goriupp

Country: Uganda
Organization: MAPLE (Microdevelopment for the Alleviation of Poverty through Learning and Entrepreneurship), an Oregon based NGO operating in Uganda

Bernardo Goriupp worked as Project Manager, responsible for design to implementation of a small scale fish farm. This included everything from technical and business modeling to investigating potential sources of funding to developing a business plan to be used for grant applications and for expansion.

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Elena Fiekowsky

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Country: Vietnam

Elana Fiekowsky worked as an impact evaluation specialist at VinaCapital Foundation the summer of 2011. VinaCapital Foundation (VCF) is the corporate foundation for VinaCapital, the largest Vietnamese investment firm. VCF focuses on providing heart surgery to children who would not be able to afford them otherwise, HeartBeat Vietnam, and improving the cardiac healthcare system in Vietnam. VCF also provides a seven year scholarship to ethnic minority girls to ensure that these girls can go finish high school and college, and go on to become role models within their communities’, Brighter Path program.

As an impact evaluation specialist, Elana designed, implemented and analyzed evaluations for their HeartBeat Vietnam and Brighter Path project. To do this work, Elana worked with the program teams to learn what indicators to measure and helped train the team to run and then understand the findings after the evaluations were done. Additionally, Elana helped design program changes in order to increase the rigor and information gathering for these projects.

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Michelle

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Country: Uganda

Michelle worked with two Kiva microfinance partners, BRAC Uganda and Pearl Microfinance Limited. Her goal as a Fellow was to ensure that each institution accurately represented Kiva and was utilizing Kiva funds efficiently. She saw how Kiva’s mission came together in the field and had significant involvement with top management at both MFIs.

The Fellowship reiterated my previously held belief that microfinance alone cannot solve problems in development, and that access to health systems, education, and good governance among other things, is needed for change to be sustainable.

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Evelyn

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Country: India

Evelyn conducted field research with World Health Partners in rural India, in support of the social franchise’s efforts to improve access to healthcare using local market forces and cutting-edge technology. Her work in Bihar focused on understanding the organic network of Bihari health providers before the WHP network was to be started. She conducted a baseline survey of existing providers to find out how they were connected to one another, including doctors, pathological labs, pharmaceutical distributors and supply chain components. The goal was to see what gaps, bottlenecks or roadblocks existed. Data included referral practices, impact on patient in terms of cost and patient travel time, cost to patient for four priority diseases so that WHP’s franchise could be as efficient and effective as possible.

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Arielle

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Country: Thailand

Arielle worked at Population and Community Development Association (PDA) in Bangkok, Thailand where she designed a Community Development Program to target the specific needs of migrants in Thailand. This entailed creating assessment guidelines, conducting numerous interviews and researching the social, political, and economic factors at play in these communities in order to improve Thai-migrant relations.

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Meghan

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Country: Nicaragua

Meghan conducted the Program Evaluation of a microcredit and sustainable agriculture program in Leon, Nicaragua for SosteNica, a U.S.-based nonprofit that funds sustainable agriculture and development initiatives in rural Nicaragua . As the Evaluation Consultant, Meghan developed and conducted an assessment of the socio-economic and environmental impact of this pilot program on its participants.

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Sebastian

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Countries: Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala

Sebastián spent ten weeks working for Catholic Relief Services in Central America under the Agriculture for Needs (A4N) project, implemented in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. During this time, he traveled through these countries, interviewing farmers and women in savings groups, as well as local partners’ Staff. As a result of his work, CRS adapted a set of guidelines to be applied regionally for A4N. These guidelines set clear rules for local partners to implement the project and how to work wit the beneficiaries in delivering tangible and intangible inputs for agricultural production, small business, savings groups and large investments in productive infrastructures. Sebastián experienced firsthand the powerful effect that savings groups have in women’s lives and the challenges faced by rural households in the most impoverished areas in Central America.

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Jocelyn

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Country: Catholic Relief Services

Jocelyn worked with Catholic Relief Services-Rwanda (CRS-Rw) to analyze how male and female farmers benefit differently from CRS’ agricultural and value-added production programs. She designed focus group surveys to meet with coffee, sweet potato, and cassava farmer’s groups. Her research was shared with the CRS-Rw livelihoods team to improve future agricultural and gender programming.

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Jillian

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Country: India

Jillian worked at CARE’s Economic Development Unit, examining and documenting agricultural projects put in place as part of the recovery process after the 2004 tsunami that devastated the east coast of India. She is analyzing agricultural and fisheries value chains, with an eye to using markets to empower women and support sustainable development

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