Introducing Emma’s Updates & Fall Interns
My name is Emma, I am currently interning with GenHR as a remote fall intern and will be updating you all on our work through this blog.
I am French, from Paris, and study in the United Kingdom at the University of Warwick: I am a final year Politics and International Studies undergraduate student. Being at university during the pandemic will be a lot different than other years: all of our lectures are being held online as well as some of our smaller classes, no conferences, parties or other events…
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has recently announced new restrictive measures to curb the spread of the virus: bars and restaurants will close at 10pm, social gatherings of more than six people are prohibited, and a few regions of the country have gone into local lockdown. Hopefully these measures will relieve the country, its healthcare system and economy.
Regarding my work at GenHR, so far I have been researching organisations we could collaborate with on existing or future projects, working on social media marketing strategy, writing posts for our various social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter - respectively @generationhumanrights; Generation Human Rights; @GenHumanRights - you should follow us!), and working on this blog! This blog will be used to keep you all informed on our projects, introduce you to our team… We aim to post once or twice a month!
Begüm Şimşir, from Turkey, is also a fall intern at GenHR.
She is a final year undergraduate law student at the Turkish German University in Istanbul. During our last Zoom meeting, she shared that, in her opinion, Turkey is sort of denying the pandemic – the real numbers of coronavirus cases are not shared as there is not enough testing, people aren’t inclined to wear a mask although there are fines in place for those who do not respect this rule…
All of her university classes are online, so she is currently staying at her family home in Balıkesir, a town in the west of Turkey. Due to the impossibility of holding face-to-face classes before the end of the term, her midterms have been pushed back so she will have to take them at the same time as her finals! The pandemic, and the uncertainty it brings, has definitely messed things up for everyone.
At GenHR, Begüm is working on our QuaranTEENing project, which consists of creating a story map with submissions we receive from teens around the world reflecting on their quarantine experiences and the changes the pandemic has brought to their daily lives. She writes the academic texts for the Story Map, researching news and articles to bring more details to the stories submitted by the teens. For example, if someone talks about how they have adapted to online education in country X, Begüm will research how country X has been handling education in order to write a text providing background information to the story submitted.