Rebecca Masinde

I really couldn’t summarise my experience at Gender Links in a paragraph – it would be injustice, but I will try. Working at GL was my very first internship experience and it was nothing short of a blessing. From day one I was never treated like your typical intern but more like an equal employee.

I learned the ropes quickly and almost immediately GL Executive Director Colleen Lowe Morna entrusted me with a significant amount of research responsibility. I was baffled by her faith in me to get the job done. It is amazing what you can do when someone puts their faith in you. Colleen was and still remains a large inspiration to me – the tenacity, ambition, motherly-nature yet aggressive approach to business, penchant for perfection, structured-mind yet free spirit, have left a lingering influence on me as a career-woman, an advocate for women’s empowerment and a person: besides, who can say that their boss wrote a thesis on Bob Marley!?

Above all, being able to play an integral part in the “Business Unusual” (gender, election and media) training in South Africa was an amazing experience, expanded by travelling to Namibia and Swaziland with Colleen and GL training associate Trevor Davies. Gender Links listened to every suggestion I made. More important GL highlighted every mistake I made and addressed it with a kindness and attention that made me a better employee and a better person.

I keep up with the growth of the organisation regularly and every time I am in South Africa with my family GL is in the news. I am so proud to have been a part of such a unique and successful organisation and would move back in a heartbeat and work at GL. To all future interns, Colleen and her team are an absolute delight to be around. So settle in, be comfortable and trust that all that hard work is only a testament to the talent that you already possess – perhaps you just do not realise yet!

Rebecca Masinde was a GL Intern in 2007.