NOTES FROM THE FIELD: MEGAN NALAMACHU '22

Megan Nalamachu '22 interned at Save the Children during the 2021 winter term. The following is an excerpt from her internship report.

Founded in 1919, Save the Children works around the world to improve the lives of children by improving their education, healthcare, and economic opportunities as well as providing support and resources during natural disasters and other emergency situations. The Behavior Change and Community Health team (BCCH) is a team in the Global Health branch of the organization that works on a portfolio of ongoing and new programs. As a fellow, I worked remotely to provide support on several projects, many of which are centered on monitoring and evaluating programs in Guatemala and El Salvador and projects that were established in response to the current COVID-19 outbreak. Another main project that I worked on was the READY project, which works to support the global GOARN Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) group on community engagement in low-resource settings to collect and curate case studies on community engagement during COVID-19. I was also tasked with updating and finalizing content of the Partnership Defined Quality (PDQ) field guide and the monitoring and evaluating document.

This internship allowed me to work on important projects that are currently relevant. For example, the Guatemala Case Study that I worked on allowed me to learn about the RCCE work that Save the Children has been doing around the world, as well as to understand the process and importance of monitoring and evaluating existing projects. It also allowed me to participate in the documentation process, which has been key to future development of programs. Another positive takeaway from this internship was the ability to collaborate with different organizations. While my primary work has been supporting Save the Children and their country offices, my work with the READY project was in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University as well as informants in WHO, U-Learn, and other non-profit. Lastly, I learned about the process of requesting funding. One of the smaller projects I was working on was for the Global Alliance for SBC. I worked with their Resource Generation Committee to develop a spreadsheet with donors and donor application criteria and funding cycles. A key part of non-profit organizations is requesting funding from major donors, and it was valuable for me to see just how in-depth and difficult the process can be, as there are many different donors that fund certain projects and have certain requirements.

The projects I worked on have given me insight into how non-profits develop and evaluate programs as well as how these organizations support countries during emergency situations. They also taught me about the administrative difficulties of such programs. For example, for the Guatemala Case Study I have been working on, we had to obtain IRB approval for the main evaluation portion of the project, and my supervisor had me work on the paperwork for said approval. Putting in the groundwork to even begin working on the documentation process takes up most of the time for these projects, and learning how to navigate those processes was valuable. This work has given me practical experience of what a career in global health looks like in a non-profit organization, as I plan on pursuing a similar career after completing my undergraduate education. I’d like to thank the Rockefeller Center for funding this opportunity.

The Rockefeller Internships Program has funding for Dartmouth undergraduate students to help defray the cost of living expenses associated with a full-time, unpaid, leave-term internships in the fields of public policy, public affairs, and social entrepreneurship.