I was worried about getting an internship here in Germany – my German was only about ~B1.5 at the time, and I didn’t think it would be easy to move to Berlin or abroad for 3 months. Therefore, while writing an article for the Bulletin (of which I’m the editor), I was taking mental notes while discussing Thuringian NGOs with our Marketing and Publicity Director, Andrés. Almost in passing, he mentioned an NGO working on solar energy in nearby Jena.

I remembered the conversation later and wrote to him asking if he could tell me the name.

ANSOLE, he replied. I looked it up – the African Network for Solar Energy.

ANSOLE is an international NGO based in Germany and run by Prof. Daniel A. M. Egbe, originally from Cameroon. ANSOLE focuses on achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 in Africa, which has over 600 million people who have no access to electricity. The cornerstone of the organization’s work is the network itself, which brings together a wide variety of people, from students to scholars and professionals, who have an interest in Africa and renewable energy. Prof. Egbe is also the head of the SDG7 working group for the World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations (WAITRO), a UN organization.

While I was discussing the possibility of an internship, I brought up my design skills and so on, thinking those would be of most use. I am also a professional science writer, but not a scientist; to my surprise, Prof. Egbe asked me if I would like to join him and some of his colleagues on their panel at the UN General Assembly Science Summit (SSUNGA). 

“Uh…yes,” I think I said. But via email. And a bit more formally.

That speech became my internship project, one of several. I went to Jena almost daily on the train and worked in the office there – that was a nice experience, as I hadn’t had much of a chance to see Thuringia (I strongly recommend Paradis Park near the center of town!). I helped with various administrative tasks, design work, and so on. One of my main tasks was to put together and publish a booklet on Africa Days (the annual ANSOLE conference).

The other was the UN speech.

When I started to work on the speech, I quickly realized that my idea of “I am not a scientist, so let me put together something general that can act as a tie-together for the panel” was significantly more work than I’d thought. My title was “The State of Renewable Energy Research in Africa.” This turned out to be a vast undertaking. While making the publicity for the event, I also realized that I was supposed to be on a panel, not only with experts from across the continent, but with the Minister of Communications, Digital Economy and Digitalization of the Administration of Chad. Additionally, the weekend before the event, Prof. Egbe informed me that he wanted me to give the keynote for the panel, since I had worked so hard on the speech. Terrified is an understatement.

In the end, everything thankfully went very well. Our session was virtual (the Minister joined us online from New York, where he had accompanied the Chadian Prime Minister to the live General Assembly), so I broadcast my speech/helped run the panel from the ANSOLE office in Jena and afterward took a late train home. Unfortunately, due to the new SSUNGA conference format with its virtual events hall, it doesn’t appear that there’s a public link, but below is the cover slide. (I gave the same speech at this year’s ANSOLE-WAITRO joint conference; that link is online.)

I learned a great deal this past summer and was honored that the ANSOLE leadership put their trust in me as a SSUNGA panel member. Additionally, given my comm background, I helped start social media accounts and put together a comm strategy as well as started work on a website overhaul (I’ve done a great deal of comm work in my previous jobs, and many NGOs tend to have a lot of tasks and limited time). I went back to Jena in the following weeks and did a workshop on how to design and maintain the new site, providing a base template to get started and offering to answer questions as needed. The team there is expanding, and I tried to set up as much as I could so that each team member could update the site and boost ANSOLE’s work as efficiently as possible. I wasn’t sure how much I planned to volunteer in the future due to time constraints, but I wanted to leave something that others could build on. 

(After an unexpected series of events for which I am very thankful, I now am helping ANSOLE part-time as a member of their staff. That, too, could be a possibility. But this is about internships.)

A note to fellow MPP students seeking internships: reach out directly to people. Say how you can be helpful.

At the internship? Learn new things, new skills; don’t limit yourself based on what you think you know. Think about what you want to learn and do. Think about what you can build.

Special thanks to Prof. Daniel A. M. Egbe and Vidvuds Beldavs of Riga Photonics Center (who works with ANSOLE in an advisory capacity), and to Chris Seiferth, who showed me the ropes. Check out ANSOLE at www.ansole.org.