The internship is designed to offer students firsthand experience and involvement in Austrian non-profit-organizations and charities, enabling them to broaden their understanding of European society and non-profit culture. The accompanying weekly seminar allows for reflection and observations about the experience and serves as a forum for questions that come up during the onset placement, as well as to put issues into academic perspective. The general aim of the seminar is to explore the meaning of team work and to reflect one’s own position as a social actor.
Prerequisites:
Students from all fields, who are curious, engaged, and want to experience how it is like to work in an Austrian NGO/NPO are invited to take this course. Students must be open-minded, courageous, and interested in finding out more about the working practice of NGOs/NPOs.
Learning outcomes:
The purpose of the internship and the learning process in the seminar is to broaden the students’
experience and understanding of European society and non-profit culture. The students will learn to:
• understand the working practice of Austrian NGOs/NPOs in a local/global context,
• recognize the circumstances and perspectives of non-profit-organizations in Europe,
• comprehend history, objectives, tasks, missions and challenges of organizations in the context of societal, political and economic circumstances,
• critically approach key concepts and terms of development and development aid,
• critically reflect one's own position as a "changing" and/or "helping agent" when working for an organization.
Method of presentation:
Experimental work in an NGO/NPO in Vienna (conducted by students including documentation and analysis);
Learning by doing;
Fieldwork experience;
Participant observation;
Discussions of corresponding literature and texts that will be handed out in class;
Thematic working groups with special assignments within the seminar working time.
Required work and form of assessment:
Students will be required to join several hours per week (approx. 6-8 hours) during the semester and volunteer on specific work tasks each non-profit-organization is offering. Students will be able to choose “their” preferred organization from a list of options according to their abilities and capacity. Regular attendance at the internship locations and the accompanying weekly seminar is expected.
content:
Internship:
The internship placements vary depending on the nature of the organization as well as the working area in which the student will volunteer. The internship program is to be agreed upon the intern and the job
supervisor at the beginning of the semester.
Seminar:
The aim of the seminar is to:
1. Exchange ideas and to discuss the students experiences regarding the internship, the meaning of teamwork, with particular focus on the Austrian environment and working space;
2. To introduce the "European culture of NGOs/NPOs", the facts and the figures, and to highlight the historical development of NGOs/NPOs in Austria;
3. Fieldwork methods will be introduced to enrich the experience and data gathering procedure
during the internship;
4. To introduce development and development aid as a historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs;
5. To analyze the derivations, contexts, and uses of language regarding key terms and concepts associated with NGOs/NPOs to unpack the implicit power relations and hidden agendas;
6. Definitions and basic tools will be introduced for gender analysis and gender planning in projects conducted by non-profit organizations;
7. Current issues.
The students will be motivated to discuss their experiences within local, global and theoretical contexts.
Non-Profit Organization Work Options:
(options vary according to current projects)
• WWF Int'l - Danube-Carpathian Programme (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Women without borders (Women's Activist Organization)
• Four Paws (Animal Activist Organization)
• Greenpeace (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Don Bosco Flüchtlingsheim (Catholic Youth Education Organization)
• Caritas (Catholic Aid Organization)
• Global 2000 (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Diakonie Wien (Evangelist Organization)
• Green Cross (Medical Emergency Service)
• IFOR, International Fellowship of Reconciliation (Peace through Active Non-violence, International)
• Workers Samaritan Federation /Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund Österreichs (Medical Aid Organization)
Required readings:
Sachs, Wolfgang. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books,
1992.
Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Edelman, Marc, and Angelique Haugerud. The Anthropology of Development and Globalisation: From
Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing,
2008.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Katharina Klettermayer earned her MA degree in social and cultural anthropology. Her academic focus has been the anthropology of development and gender studies. She has been working for the Romano Centro in Vienna, an Austrian NGO that supports Roma and Sinti living in Vienna for several years. Her international background and her extensive travels to Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States have strengthened her interest in working and exchanging with people from all parts of the globe.
Supervised Public Service Internship Seminar
The internship is designed to offer students firsthand experience and involvement in Austrian non-profit-organizations and charities, enabling them to broaden their understanding of European society and non-profit culture. The accompanying weekly seminar allows for reflection and observations about the experience and serves as a forum for questions that come up during the onset placement, as well as to put issues into academic perspective. The general aim of the seminar is to explore the meaning of team work and to reflect one’s own position as a social actor.
Students from all fields, who are curious, engaged, and want to experience how it is like to work in an Austrian NGO/NPO are invited to take this course. Students must be open-minded, courageous, and interested in finding out more about the working practice of NGOs/NPOs.
The purpose of the internship and the learning process in the seminar is to broaden the students’
experience and understanding of European society and non-profit culture. The students will learn to:
• understand the working practice of Austrian NGOs/NPOs in a local/global context,
• recognize the circumstances and perspectives of non-profit-organizations in Europe,
• comprehend history, objectives, tasks, missions and challenges of organizations in the context of societal, political and economic circumstances,
• critically approach key concepts and terms of development and development aid,
• critically reflect one's own position as a "changing" and/or "helping agent" when working for an organization.
Experimental work in an NGO/NPO in Vienna (conducted by students including documentation and analysis);
Learning by doing;
Fieldwork experience;
Participant observation;
Discussions of corresponding literature and texts that will be handed out in class;
Thematic working groups with special assignments within the seminar working time.
Students will be required to join several hours per week (approx. 6-8 hours) during the semester and volunteer on specific work tasks each non-profit-organization is offering. Students will be able to choose “their” preferred organization from a list of options according to their abilities and capacity. Regular attendance at the internship locations and the accompanying weekly seminar is expected.
Internship:
The internship placements vary depending on the nature of the organization as well as the working area in which the student will volunteer. The internship program is to be agreed upon the intern and the job
supervisor at the beginning of the semester.
Seminar:
The aim of the seminar is to:
1. Exchange ideas and to discuss the students experiences regarding the internship, the meaning of teamwork, with particular focus on the Austrian environment and working space;
2. To introduce the "European culture of NGOs/NPOs", the facts and the figures, and to highlight the historical development of NGOs/NPOs in Austria;
3. Fieldwork methods will be introduced to enrich the experience and data gathering procedure
during the internship;
4. To introduce development and development aid as a historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs;
5. To analyze the derivations, contexts, and uses of language regarding key terms and concepts associated with NGOs/NPOs to unpack the implicit power relations and hidden agendas;
6. Definitions and basic tools will be introduced for gender analysis and gender planning in projects conducted by non-profit organizations;
7. Current issues.
The students will be motivated to discuss their experiences within local, global and theoretical contexts.
Non-Profit Organization Work Options:
(options vary according to current projects)
• WWF Int'l - Danube-Carpathian Programme (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Women without borders (Women's Activist Organization)
• Four Paws (Animal Activist Organization)
• Greenpeace (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Don Bosco Flüchtlingsheim (Catholic Youth Education Organization)
• Caritas (Catholic Aid Organization)
• Global 2000 (Environmental Activist Organization)
• Diakonie Wien (Evangelist Organization)
• Green Cross (Medical Emergency Service)
• IFOR, International Fellowship of Reconciliation (Peace through Active Non-violence, International)
• Workers Samaritan Federation /Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund Österreichs (Medical Aid Organization)
Sachs, Wolfgang. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books,
1992.
Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Edelman, Marc, and Angelique Haugerud. The Anthropology of Development and Globalisation: From
Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing,
2008.
Katharina Klettermayer earned her MA degree in social and cultural anthropology. Her academic focus has been the anthropology of development and gender studies. She has been working for the Romano Centro in Vienna, an Austrian NGO that supports Roma and Sinti living in Vienna for several years. Her international background and her extensive travels to Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States have strengthened her interest in working and exchanging with people from all parts of the globe.