Hi everyone, we are Chiara and Anita, final year students of the Management course at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan. We were looking for an international experience that could allow us to combine a curricular internship with our master’s degree thesis work. When we discovered about E4Impact Foundation and the chance of an internship in Nairobi, we thought the experience could suit us perfectly: it seemed unconventional, interesting and convenient for both academic and personal curricula.
Since our first days in Kenya, we’ve forgotten all doubts and fears we had. We immediately understood that we would come back in Italy changed and grown up. We got in touch with an amazing culture and heart-warming people, and this helped us to open our minds in ways we never thought about. We worked closely with the E4Impact Accelerator team, supporting them in their daily activities and developing relationships with Kenyan entrepreneurs.
Unfortunately, when COVID-19 started spreading in Kenya we all agreed that the safest option was to return and work from home. We kept doing our meetings online, keeping in touch with the entrepreneurs so that the team could continue to involve us in different activities. The weekly recap meeting has been transferred to a video call on Zoom as well as the training sessions that the entrepreneurs regularly attended on Thursday and Friday.
None of us had experience in “smart working” before, neither us nor the rest of the team, but we would definitely say that we are doing a great job at it! With the rest of the team, we worked on projects and supported the entrepreneurs: this process may seem slower but it’s still very efficient. Surely, being in the same room facilitates communication, but we managed to adapt to this historical situation in the best way we could.
Our experience did not end in the way we hoped, but we surely learnt and are still learning a lot.
Chiara and Anita