Carolyn February 14-18

Last week started out with Valentine's Day, a good opportunity to make some baked goods and have a little Valentine's Day party at the office. Monday set the tone for a good, if hectic week at Amnesty International.

The first few things I did last week were in relation to the rally that was planned in front of the White House for Saturday the 12th. The rally was planned to show solidarity with the Egyptian protestors after Mubarak's speech Thursday night when he said he was not willing to step down. However, on Friday Mubarak actually did step down, so the significance of the rally went from supporting the protests to celebrating the victory of the Egyptian people. Amnesty is very hopeful about democracy in Egypt, however its first priority is still to protect human rights of citizens.

As I am sure you all know, the protests in Egypt have sparked protests all over the Middle East that continue to spread every day. Amnesty has been extremely cognizant of the developing unrest in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain because of the brutal tactics that have been employed by police officers to quell protestors. I am constantly reading reports about human rights violations and mortalities in these countries, and while democracry it is undoubtedly a worthy cause, it is difficult to read about the carnage that is resulting.

I also got the chance to attend a lecture about Amnesty's work to promote women's rights and those of impoverished people. The campaign is called 'Demand Dignity' and it is a large movement with several specific tactics that is aimed toward lessening the disparity in human rights and maternal mortality in different parts of the world. I have always been interested in the idea of economic development as being an integral factor in promoting fair government, civic freedom and human rights so the lecture was very interesting for me. It was also nice to get a break from doing media work for a few hours to hear about one of the overall goals of Amnesty; one that gives me daily satisfaction in being part of this organization.

In between these interesting events I have also been developing my abilities to perform administrative work and multitask. My supervisor had his last day yesterday, and for the past few weeks I have been being trained to take over almost all of his tasks. In addition to my intern jobs I am not managing our news subscriptions, in charge of paying the company credit card bill, and facilitating journalists' interaction directly with our representatives. I feel competent about my ability to perform these tasks, but I know that some days it will be overwhelming. I will write my next post about how my first week with my new responsibilities goes! Have a good week!