14 june 2011
I’m currently interning in Conserve HRP. It is an upcycling company and as I mentioned before, I did not have any ideas about my job scope. On Monday, Anita and Shalab, her husband and co-founder of the company, sat with four of us. As we predicted, Jin Fu will take care of optimization and cost calculation. Shalab looked at Shi Ming who is majoring in Economics, and asked him, “Are you ok with market research?” And he said, “Yes.” It means he will look at competitors and which one is the best-selling products. Siok Xin, who was doing double major in Theatre Studies and Business Management was interested in marketing, so she will reach out to media and she will also be in charge of catalogue. Shalab asked Anita to settle with me about my project.
Having psychology as a background, I really do not have any ideas on what project I will take. I would be very interested in their community project, such as the school and mobile medical clinic for the rag pickers’ family, but Anita said that there will be language barriers so there’s no point she sent me to their school. She asked me about my interest, so I asked for clarification about “preparation of sample range” and “calculation of fair wages”. Initially I was interested in calculating fair wages because I thought I would also need to do research on government’s requirement of minimum wage and research on living cost in India to know whether the current wage is really a fair wage or not. While preparing sample range will require me to design the display room and the stock room (the stock room is still messy because they just shifted to the current location) and design the variation of the current products (merchandising). I told her that I do not have any knowledge in designing but she allowed me to give it a try.
After the discussion, we were asked to write our own terms of reference. It’s something like KPI (Key Performance Indicator). In the process of writing my own terms of reference, I realized that I have a better vision for preparing sample range, rather than in calculation of fair wages because what they expect is more into cost calculation until we can come up with the amount of fair wages that the company can give. I’ve realized that everywhere interns do ‘saikang’ job, such as compiling database, and so on and so forth. But this time even though I need to cross-check between current database and catalogue, look at the samples in the shelves, find out about what HRP color is available for the background of the shelves, I don’t feel that I’m a ‘saikang warrior’. I can really feel that there is something big waiting ahead of me, which is my own vision on what I imagine the display room will be.
In the middle of the process, Anita also asked us to write a travel blog to promote conserve and she asked us to compile database of funding opportunities. I’ve decided to take up these responsibilities because I want to practice writing during vacation, hehehe, and I also want to know more about funding opportunities, just in case I want to set up an NGO one day J Sometimes I feel that I have lots of work to do and I’m worried that I can’t achieve my own terms of references, but I do feel that I’ve learned a lot in one week. The fact that my supervisor is very busy and we do not meet Anita regularly also become a challenge for me to work independently, but at the same time, to have courage to ask, ask, ask, and ASK!! Hehehehe. Yesterday went I went down to the store room to find HRP colour for the shelves background, put them behind the products to see whether the colors clashed or not, and took picture on different HRP colour, I felt the joy of working (even though I was sweating like mad coz the stock room was HOT!). I felt very happy to find out that I’m moving each day even though I move very slowly, hahaha. Without any means to promote this NOC India programme, I would say that this is not just an internship, it’s really an entrepreneurship programme. But let me warn you one think, my aunt said, do not trust my words coz everything is good in front of my eyes. HAHAHAHA. I think how much you learn really depends on how much you want to give. Just give more and you will not regret. Even though you also do some kinds of saikang work here, you’ll see it differently. For me, I look at it as someone who is learning to be entrepreneur and each day when I work, I keep thinking on how I’m going to bring this concept of upcycling or to give birth to my own ideas for the rag pickers in my hometown. That’s my motivation to learn more things every day J Thank God for this opportunity to be in India J
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