Hi everyone, we are Annalisa Carignani and Martina Rumma. We are currently attending the Business Management Master’s Degree at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan. We are writing to share our experience as interns for the E4Impact Accelerator. We acknowledged this opportunity during one of our classes, and we immediately thought it would have been a wonderful experience.
So, our journey started in February 2021. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19, we have not had the chance to travel to Kenya and work on-site, but this has not limited our relationship with the team, as we felt included from the very beginning. We have truly understood the power of technology, actually: we have had the chance to participate in several projects, meetings, and lessons which were geographically placed very far away from one from the other, things that we would not have been able to do in a normal situation if we want to see the positive side of it!
During this period, we have learned many things, one of which is being an entrepreneur. And what could be better for a student, who is almost at the end of his Economics studies, than understanding the necessary mechanisms for implementing a business? In addition, we could interface with the beneficiaries of the programs we were working with, who belong to different business sectors, backgrounds, and needs. This is the aspect that made our experience unique and formative. Working in an Accelerator means working in a very dynamic context, in continuous evolution, at the center of economic-social-environmental and technological change, in which you never stop learning. Despite the distance, we have also learned what it means to work in a group, share knowledge, and demonstrate full availability inside and outside the team.
In conclusion, we can say that, besides having been an advantageous academic experience for us, it has also been outstanding in terms of human relationships. We were catapulted into a reality where relationships go beyond mere work, leaving room for the personal sphere. The most wonderful thing is that we felt like we were in Kenya, next to the people we worked with, even from our apartment in Milan.
Annalisa Carignani and Martina Rumma