Greetings from Bangkok! Three months have passed already, and my internship will end in a few days. This is going to be the last blog post about my summer internship. In this blog, I would like to give the final updates of my internship and share what I have gained from this experience.

For the past few weeks, I am finishing up several tasks that I have been working on such as reviewing and compiling information related to Gender and Education course offered at universities, writing a concept note for conducting a mapping exercise to analyze assessment approaches for measuring leaning outcomes of Global Citizenship Education, and finalizing the article which zooms in the voices of participants attended school leadership event. In addition, I had an opportunity to assist the office visit and Global Citizenship workshop for undergraduate students from China and attended an external meeting with university professors from the Republic of Korea to discuss potential opportunities for more cooperation between them and our organization. Although tasks related to Global Citizenship Education and Higher Education belong to other teams, I was fortunate enough to get involved with other team’s projects. As I mentioned in the 2^nd blog post, it is not always easy to get tasks assigned due to time constrains and limited capacities within my team. Thus, I continued looking for leaning opportunities outside my team. I learnt it is very important to network with people from different teams and share what your interests are.

During my final weeks, I met up with staff members and other interns from different teams for the last time. I believe being able to reach out and talk to professionals who have a wide range of practical experiences in educational development field is one of the privileges that you get when you are doing your internship at the international organization. I truly appreciate staff members being approachable and willing to share their experiences and insightful advice with me. Also, connecting with other interns is another great opportunity to learn about other teams’ projects.

Working at the international organization that I had always wanted to work for was a great experience for me. The knowledge, perspectives, and skills that I had gained from my studies at IEDP helped me take more objective viewpoint when I look at how projects are carried out in this organization (i.e. its working culture and organizational structure). Through my internship, I was able to narrow down “how” I would like to contribute to gender equality which is my main interest.

Lastly, I would like to highlight that the past three months were filled with new and exciting experiences both inside and outside the office. I really enjoyed meeting with professionals with diverse backgrounds and immersing myself into Thai culture (especially amazing Thai food culture! – finding out my new favorite Thai dishes was included in my bucket list). Also, I am glad that I decided to travel to Vietnam and Singapore during my stay in Bangkok.

I would like to make good use of this internship experience as I go back to Penn and pursue my studies. Goodbye Bangkok till I see you again!