By Akshita Nanda, MIA 2021
The ADB-LKYSPP 2020 internship experience provided me incredible insight into how a multinational development-oriented financial institution responds to a crisis, while continuing existing programmes.
My internship was with the Social Development Thematic Group of the Asian Development Bank. This group promotes new initiatives and policies that aim to reduce poverty, inequality, and vulnerability among poor and marginalized groups by transforming social institutions toward inclusive and equitable social development. Projects managed by the group include programmes and technical assistance to ADB member countries in the areas of ageing, eldercare and financial inclusion.
The 2020 internship was unlike any other. It took place as Covid-19 was recognized as a global pandemic and as nation-states and international organizations were rushing to rapidly respond to the crisis of the century. ADB-LKYSPP interns like me could not fly into Manila to be stationed at the bank’s headquarters like usual, but we did get the chance to work remotely on some of the bank’s efforts to understand the short-term and long-term implications of the pandemic on development goals, and on vulnerable populations.
As an intern, my role involved:
- Brainstorming and designing a public platform for ADB to connect with professionals and expert consultants in the fields of ageing and eldercare. The aim was to build a community of knowledge experts, who would share resources and have dialogue. I have been informed that this platform might soon go live, and I am very excited to see this happen!
- Researching the impact of increased tech adoption in the wake of Covid-19, specifically the impact that this would have on elderly and ageing populations in member countries. My final report summarized the situation in China, India, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. It identified the extent of the digital gap in these countries. Users aged 60+ were already less likely to be online in these countries. Increasing digitalization efforts in the wake of Covid-19 not only isolated the elderly, but affected younger populations who are reliant on grandparents or older caregivers. I delivered an online presentation on the findings, as well as a blog post for internal use.
The internship at ADB gave me access to a treasure-trove of data and to experts who were working on rapid responses to the pandemic, while also hacking or rethinking existing programmes to support vulnerable populations. I sat in on conferences and briefings held by public-private healthcare partnerships across Asia; gender activists in Malaysia; eldercare tech designers in the United States, Thailand and Japan; and, of course, various international organisations including UNESCAP. All were tackling various aspects of the same problem: protecting and empowering ageing populations in a volatile and dangerous world.
The problem is immense but so too is the amount of expertise being devoted to it. I was humbled by the amount of hard work that goes into a 2-page country brief, and delighted at the thoughtfulness and diversity of research conducted by experts and interns at the ADB. For example, as part of my project, I identified data gaps that needed to be filled – policymakers and financial institutions needed numbers for effective design of policies and programmes. But the team also focused on the ethical and empowerment issues around the exclusion of ageing populations from the digital world. It is not just about solving the problem of older people accessing the Internet, it is about recognizing that ageing populations must be part of the team that designs solution to this problem – and also part of the national digital strategy at the start! Thanks to this internship, I learnt a lot about the unconscious assumptions made when beneficiaries of a programme are not part of the design of the programme right at the start, and how these assumptions affect delivery and roll-out of programmes. The Social Development Thematic Group’s work addresses such issues as well and being part of these discussions made me rethink my own approach to community service and leadership.
The ADB-LKYSPP internship was also a fantastic introduction to the perils and opportunities of working remotely and working from home. Team members were stuck in different time zones and had varied access to the Internet. We rarely saw each other’s faces online, as we conserved bandwidth or tried to retain some kind of privacy as we worked from home. Several team members, including myself, faced personal crises during the internship period and had to focus on caregiving responsibilities at home. The bank’s people-centric work culture was then made delightfully clear: operational tasks were always less important than whatever team members were dealing with in their personal lives. This was not just true for me, the expendable intern, but also for full-time staff who were essential to the team’s activities. The work always got done but the people were put first. I left the internship feeling inspired and enlightened about responsible management of human resources and hope to have the opportunity to manage my own team in similar fashion one day.