It takes a lot of dedication to be an ERASMUS+ intern these days. First of all you have to make the decision whether or not to travel to a foreign country, where you know nobody, in the uncertain times during a global pandemic. Second of all, when you make that decision, you have to isolate and quarantine yourself for 10 days in a 1-room “apartment” with a shared bathroom and kitchen.
Such was the start of Anna’s internship with the #LoVeSeSDG project. And it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride with a sharp upturn after the initial quarantine, moving into the extra desk in Dorothy’s office at BIO (Dept of Biological Sciences) at University of Bergen Marineholmen campus and first interactions with the #LoVSeSDG “lab” with Jessica, PhD candidate. Jessica and Anna even bought plane tickets and rented an apartment on Airbnb in Andenes in Vesterålen for the next round of fieldwork. Things were on the up and up!
But when the new wave hit Bergen in November 2020, the nose of the rollercoaster started pointing down again…plane tickets cancelled and back in the “home office” 1-room student-housing simplicity.
Luckily, the social science fieldwork was able to be rescheduled to a digital format. And now, after a week of stakeholder interviews with folks in Andøya, Anna is starting to get some meat on the bone. Here is a picture from her weekly supervisor meeting with Dorothy, with her showing her notes on SDG Target reports from the national level, and the knowledge gaps in the local reporting.
Anna is also currently designing the method of “SDG Relevance Tracing” to be performed in digital workshops with stakeholders from Andøya. Hopefully these workshops will occur before Christmas.
So congratulations to Anna, first for her determination and second for the fruit that her internship is starting to bear!
