CERCular: No.2 of 1997

The internship programme of the United Nations Development Programme offers graduate students the opportunity to acquire direct exposure to UNDP's work in the Headquarters or a country office. Since I have long been interested in the work of international agencies, I contacted the China Country Office about the possibility of involvement in some education-related projects this last summer. The China Country Office is undertaking a project to improve compulsory education in poor areas, especially focusing on girl students, and I had the opportunity to join the project as an intern. I have recently transferred from M.Ed. to Ph.D. studies at the University of Hong Kong, and the experience greatly deepened my understanding of the issues I am studying.

After I arrived in Beijing, I learned that the State Education Commission (SEdC), the implementing agency of the UNDP projects, was having difficulty placing me in their office. The SEdC is a national organization, and it is regulated that foreigners cannot work there. Thus, in consultation with project officers in the SEdC, I decided to go to one of the project sites.

I visited Guangxi Autonomous Region, one of the four target areas for this project. They are now facing the problems of low enrolment and retention rate in compulsory education, particularly for girl students. To improve the situation, training for teachers and administrators and new curriculum and teaching materials development have been conducted. Teachers in the Regional Training Centre for Primary School Teachers, with whom I worked, were writing textbooks on girls' psycho-health and labour skills. They were very young and energetic, and eager to know more about the situation in rural China as well as other developing countries. In the project schools, principals and teachers joined training courses under the project, and were strongly motivated to improve their schools. Girls' classes were established, and girl students' enrolments were gradually increased. Parents' classes, which taught agricultural skills such as sugar cane processing and tropical fruit planting, were provided in schools which aimed to become centres of community development.

Through the field visit in this internship, I could learn first-hand the various problems from which rural poor areas in China suffer. I believe that the experiences will be very helpful for my doctoral study. Furthermore, by living together and exchanging opinions and ideas with local people there, my interest in Chinese society has greatly increased. I also learned how valuable and interesting it was to convey my visions and professional knowledge to many people, especially in the vernacular language, which allows more interaction with local people. As a native Japanese who also of course uses much English, I was made aware of the need for effort to improve my Chinese-language abilities.

The internship like the one I joined might be very useful for those who are interested in the way projects in international agencies are undertaken, and those who want to conduct field visits to complement their development-related studies.