Past Fellows

Chelsea Hyppolite
Major: Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law
Class: 2027

“I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to have been a Communications Intern for Le Réseau des Femmes Africaines pour la gestion Communautaire des Forêts (REFACOF) or African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests. This was my first time traveling to the continent of Africa as well as the Eastern Hemisphere in general. As an aspiring human rights attorney, REFACOF’s mission of advancing women’s rights across 20 West and Central African nations through direct community involvement is exactly the kind of advocacy I am driven to pursue. REFACOF accomplishes this through providing monterey and educational support to women in order to allow them to obtain a more equal role in the social life of their community as well as prosper economically through securing sovereignty over land. 

My internship has advanced my education through greatly informing my perspective on human rights through gaining first hand experience fostering equality via conducting community-focused research. I am especially grateful to have grown through working for a multinational and multilingual nonprofit. An aspect of my contribution to REFACOF’s endeavors that I am especially proud of is my involvement in field research. I participated in field research through documenting interviews. This process allowed me to advance my knowledge of the French language through translating the responses interviewees gave verbally in French into spoken English. Contributing to field research has also strengthened my adaptation skills through our notable amount of the notable amount of travel we did. Notably, I had the incredible opportunity to visit 11 villages across the East, South, Central, and Littoral Regions of Cameroon.”

Kristina Moreno
Major: International Studies with a concentration in International, Norms, Security, and Cooperation
Class: 2027

“Working with REFACOF was my first experience working for a nonprofit organization and also my first international work which provided a unique view into how an international network may function. The office’s flexible structure allowed us, and sometimes required us, to find work to do. When working in the office, my primary focus was in assisting Ogochukwu with her research project. Our assigned communications work focused on building a website, project reports, auditing and building social media for the organization, as well as liaising with REFACOF’s, and by extension Cameroun-Écologie’s, staff to better understand the organization’s needs. The presence of both organizations within the same office, coupled with a very unstructured environment, posed challenges including parsing out who occupied what role, who to speak to for certain information, and how the organizations were actually separated in practice. These realities made it necessary for us to be resourceful and flexible, characteristics that will be indispensable when pursuing later research projects in contexts not dissimilar from Cameroon….

After spending seven weeks in Cameroon, I learned more about the world as it is than from any professional or educational experience I have ever had. I am grateful for my interest in research because I left with more curiosities than I arrived with. The internship, the projects, and spending time with community members enriched my cultural competencies, expanded my knowledge of organizations doing the real, hands-on work, learned the practicalities of working within the nonprofit space as well as field research, and grew my language abilities. These experiences and improved capacities have been invaluable to my future pursuit of academic research and my hope to later work in the multilateral space.”

Ogochukwu Ononiwu
Major: Master's in Environment and Sustainability
Year: Second year master’s student

“As a second-year master's student at the School of Environment and Sustainability, majoring in Sustainability and Development, with a deep inclination for environmental justice, my academic and professional interests lie at the intersection of conservation and socioeconomic development of local and indigenous communities. Specifically, the research I hoped to conduct during my time as a research intern with REFACOF was based on the hypothesis that women-led, community-based conservation projects grounded in customary land tenure systems and locally inspired definitions of conservation would achieve greater socio-ecological resilience and better align with local needs than externally designed projects. The Human Rights and Environmental Justice in Edéa, Cameroon Internship allowed me to begin exploring how women-led conservation projects within a community forest context could address the land rights and socioeconomic concerns of indigenous communities and local women…. With the aim of pursuing a PhD, where I will continue to explore the impact of Customary Land Allocation Certificates and the connection between Indigenous women-led conservation projects and community forests, this experience was foundational. I hope to use the skills gained as a UM student to continue exploring the work of organizations like REFACOF.”

Kinsey Weisenberger
Major: Public Policy 
Class: 2028

“As a student interested in pursuing international policymaking or law, my experience with REFACOF supported me on two levels: skills and perspective. The aforementioned tasks from my internship helped me build the skills needed for work I would conduct as a policy researcher or analyst at any major international organization that I could aspire to. Specifically, I got to apply writing lessons from my Public Policy coursework to these analytical project reports that forced me to think about how to concisely summarize the projects’ purpose, impact, and areas for improvement. This brief but action-oriented writing format used by REFACOF is a critical skill in the international policy space that I can use in future experiences. Learning how to tailor academic research and non-profit focused analyses to present to government officials, essentially facilitating intergroup communication, is also a skill that I believe I will continue to utilize throughout my professional life.  On a more macro level, I think that major international organizations and institutions often look and feel so far removed from the people they intend to support. Experiences like my internship with REFACOF reaffirmed my commitment to never assuming that I know what is best for a particular community or area just because of the facts on paper. There are certain needs and methodological approaches that can only be learned from listening to beneficiaries and spending time in their homes and communities. Wherever possible in future international policymaking work that I pursue, I hope to encourage more organizations to follow REFACOF’s listening-first approach. In short, my experience in Cameroon this summer with REFACOF not only changed my understanding of effective environmental advocacy, but also my approach to policymaking in the first place.”