JSGS students accepted for international internships in Asia

The Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy is pleased to announce that MPA students Everett Berg and Debora Senger have both accepted international internship opportunities with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy is pleased to announce that MPA students Everett Berg and Debora Senger have both accepted international internship opportunities with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

This program is a pilot project under a protocol arrangement between the University of Saskatchewan and the United Nations Development Program, which provides for up to eight internship opportunities for U of S grad students and law students. This is a new initiative, whereby U of S student interns will be provided field placements in select countries where UNDP has field offices in order to contribute to Legal Empowerment of the Poor-based initiatives as part of national development programs.

The Commission of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP), established in 2008, asserted that labour rights, rights to livelihood and entrepreneurship, and property rights rely on equitable and inclusive law and policy. As part of its mandate on human development, UNDP has adopted the LEP perspective, and supports a range of national, regional and global efforts to expand poor people’s access to the legal and institutional mechanisms that can help them break the vicious cycle of exclusion and poverty. Its agenda of inclusive development pursues a unique focus on key livelihood rights - property, labour, entrepreneurial rights, and access to justice – to promote inclusion and foster economic growth, poverty reduction and human development.

Everett Berg

Everett Berg, an MPA student at the U of S campus, has accepted a placement at the United Nation’s Development Program Office in the Asia Pacific Regional Centre (UNDP – APRC) located in Bangkok, Thailand.
Everett Berg

His work with the UNDP will specifically entail researching, compiling and analyzing legal empowerment initiatives being adopted by member nations within the Legal Empowerment Asian Partnership (LEAP) as a component of the preparatory process for the LEAP 2012 annual meeting. Everett will be designing and documenting a comprehensive set of strategies for empowering poor people as a menu of possible initiatives to communicate with UNDP regional offices in Asia as well as assisting in the organization of a regional workshop on accelerating achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through focused research on economic and social rights.

“An internship with the UNDP offers me the opportunity to network with people from the international community, provides exceptionally valuable experience working for an international organization and contributes to my professional growth as an analyst and designer of public policy”, says Everett.  “I hope to gain tacit knowledge of the conditions people living in poverty face on a day to day basis and how the absence of legal rights perpetuates their situation.  Interning with the UNDP will be a life changing experience because it provides a platform for utilizing my passion of public policy as a way to helping people in desperate need.”

Everett is an MPA candidate at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy with a research focus on education policy in the developing world. Everett holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Religious Studies and a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) both from the University of Saskatchewan.  Everett is currently a part-time History and English teacher at a community centered inner city high school in Saskatoon.  His experience working with at-risk youth from lower income, First Nation’s and international communities has driven his graduate work in education and social policy.

 

Debora Senger

Debora Senger, a JSGS MPA student at the U of S campus, has accepted a United Nation's Development Program Internship based out of Ha Noi, Vietnam with extensive travel around Vietnam.

Debora will be travelling to different fieldwork sites to document the work which UNDP’s partners are doing, its achievements and challenges, and to produce a paper which can be used both for internal reflection

Debora Senger

and to increase understanding within UNDP and with development partners about UNDP’s LEP work in Vietnam. UNDP currently has LEP initiatives in more than 10 provinces and cities across Viet Nam.  Additionally, Debora will support the Country Office with research on LEP issues, and assist with organization and preparation of LEP-related events during the period of the internship.

“The UNDP Internship will prepare me for my career goal of working in leadership roles for the United Nations,” says Debora. “As the UNDP Internship is a pilot project, it will also establish a solid foundation upon which the U of S can operate as the UCAN hub office. As a Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy MPA student, I am very excited about the upcoming opportunity to enhance my postgraduate work through the UNDP Internship in Vietnam. The many benefits of the UNDP Internship experience will include unparalleled career preparation and experience, the continued development of an international professional network and professional advancement.”

Debora Senger is an MPA Candidate at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. She has a Bachelor of Communication Studies degree from the University of Calgary (2006), a Photojournalism Diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (1996) and a Project Management Certificate from Mount Royal College (2009). Over the past 13 years, she has worked as a communications specialist and project coordinator in the public and not-for profit sectors. Additionally, she has worked as a photojournalist documenting CIDA’s development projects in Guatemala, and the Canadian government’s humanitarian aid delivery in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras.