Archive pour la catégorie ‘Luis Amado’

Hi Everyone,

I just finished my fifth week at Avocats sans frontières Canada, and so far I can tell you all that it has been a very interesting experience. As I explained to you last week, ASF Canada was a fairly small organization until a couple of months ago. ASF Canada has three big projects that are signed for the coming years. The projects are held in Guatemala, Colombia, and Haiti. It’s been a good experience for me, in the sense that I have been able to see how the organization is growing from a management and human resources point of view.

When I first started my internship, I was the fourth member to be part of ASF Canada’s team. As of today, there are eight employees working in the Headquarters in Quebec City, and there will be a couple more employees hired locally per project. Some of you might be wondering by now how does that affect my internship assignment, but no worries, the following paragraph is the summary of my recent activities as an intern for ASF Canada.

As the organization started growing, so did the needs for working supplies such as laptop computers, computer software for each one of the new computers, set up email accounts, office keys, desks, chairs, creating new accounts to access the computer network, etc. Even when my responsibilities deal specifically with communications, public relations, and financing; I soon realized that there are many needs within small and medium organizations. I soon became the computer guy here and I have even been training new employees on the use of computers and backing up information. I have developed a computer data security policy for the office and I’m now in charge of purchasing all the new computer material for this office and all the offices we will open in Haiti and Guatemala.

Coming from the corporate world, I no longer have the one task to do, or one big responsibility to take care of. In this environment, I’ve realized there is a big advantage in having many talents and showing multi-tasking abilities.

Hi everybody,

I’m really happy to inform you all that the first official mission of ASF Canada in Guatemala has finally concluded. The mission started on March 7th, and our colleagues finally came back yesterday. I am extremely excited about this mission, since I’m originally from Guatemala. ASF Canada has a project to establish a coalition of attorneys that will support the defense of human rights in Guatemala.

Once again, I cannot emphasize enough on how much this initiative of ASF Canada is valuable to me. As of right now, there is only one Guatemalan attorney who is involved in taking human right cases in the country. He does it on his free time and free of charge. Unfortunately, Guatemala has become over the years, one of the most violent countries in the world, and where human rights are far from being respected. To make things worst, people, mainly outside of the capital or any big cities, are taking justice into their own hands.

ASF Canada’s project is to set up an attorney coalition which will work 100% on defending human right cases. This first official mission of ASF Canada was to find the local partners in Guatemala, and to set up all the logistics aspects to establish an office in the country. ASF Canada will be in the field, in Guatemala, for a period of three years. As for me, I was extremely involved in the planning and administration process of the mission. I was very happy to help my colleague, Maria Lopez, Guatemala’s Project Manager, during all the setting up process. Once again, even if I’m here in an office tied up to my computer, I feel I can still make a difference, and support my country and help an organization that is helping to bring peace to the Guatemalan population

It was a very fulfilling week for me at work. I continue to work on the development for ASF Canada new website. I had a couple more meetings with the agencies in charge of making this big task a reality. I’ll keep you all posted on the advances of my internship. Until next week then!

Peace,

Luis

Things have been going extremely fast in the office lately. I do realize that I might not be having such an adventurous internship as many of you are having, in the sense I’m here in an office in good old Quebec City. Nevertheless, things are very interesting inside the office, and there are many projects I have been able to be involved in.

Just as I explained earlier on, I’m in charge of public relations and communications for Avocats sans frontières Canada. ASF Canada has been working in Haiti for the past four years, and they had already signed a project to work for the next couple of years, starting on January 2010. Unfortunately, after the earthquake, the original project, which involved the training of local lawyers and working on provisional incarceration, was no longer executable. The earthquake took down most of the facilities of justice in the country and many of the people responsible of the system of justice in the country.

ASF Canada then took the initiative to help Haiti in the reconstruction of justice. As for my part, my job has consisted this last week, mainly of communicating with the press about our involvement in Haiti, and booking some interviews with several TV reporters who are interested in learning what are the options for a possible intervention in Haiti for a juridical organization such as ours.

As of right now, the possibility for a project in Haiti is still in the working. Nevertheless, I have realized after talking to my colleagues, who recently came back from their recognition mission in Haiti, that there is an urgent need of helping in the reconstruction efforts in Haiti. When we talk about reconstruction, we have to think beyond the physical elements such as houses, hospitals, and school. Many of the important structures that will keep a peaceful environment in the country, such as the police, and legal entities like the Courthouses and prisons no longer exist. The reconstruction efforts in Haiti include a broader range of areas.

It’s been an interesting internship so far.  I was hired at Lawyers Without Borders/Avocats sans frontières Canada in order to help them with their communications and public relations strategy.  As soon as I started to work with them, the earthquake in Haiti changed most of the orientation of the entire organization, and therefore the priorities for my new assignment changed as well.

Lawyers Without Borders Canada is a relatively new non-for-profit organization which focuses in supporting the protection of human rights among the most vulnerable communities within the most fragile countries or countries in crisis by providing them access to justice and to legal representation. As of right now, they have three main projects: one in Colombia where they support, advise, and train local partners (lawyers and indigenous populations leaders) who are defending the human rights of indigenous populations who have been mobilized by the war, or international corporations. Another project, will soon start in Guatemala (my native country) where they will set up a similar model such as the project in Colombia, and the objective is to create a team of lawyers who will be able to engage into the defense and protection of human rights within Guatemala.  As of this moment, there is only one lawyer in the entire country of  Guatemala who has been able to defend occasionally some cases dealing with human rights violation.  Finally the project in Haiti, dealing with the intervention in a prison dealing with hundreds of  provisional imprisonment cases, and in most of the individuals held at the prison did not have an official trial and were not given the chance to have the right to an attorney.

As for right now, ASF Canada is doing a mission in Haiti in order to establish the foundation for their new project in the country, which will be to help them to reconstruct the system of justice.

As for my part, I’m still dealing with the communications side of the organization, nevertheless, I have been helping them launch this new mission and strategy in Haiti.  I’ve been extremely involved dealing with press conferences, and booking ASF Canada President interview times with Radio Canada and CBC.  The main reason why I was hired was to help them rebuilt a new website.  The organization needs to improve their visibility and they also need to solidify and centralized their brand.  I finally met with the partners Egzakt and XMedia, who will be doing our new website. Things are looking very optimistic from now on, and now that the little rush we had at the very beginning of the year is gone, I think I can finally start to work on my original assignment.  I’ll keep you all posted on the things that will come.