International intern Andrew Williamson reflects on five months with Natural Justice

International intern Andrew Williamson

An internship with Natural Justice (NJ) offers an opportunity to experience first-hand the work and dedication of an NGO within small team having a meaningful and significant impact. I was with Natural Justice from February 17 to July 17 in which I was welcomed into the team as an equal and was provided with an opportunity to really immerse myself into the daily work of the organisation and understand the importance and necessity of the work NJ does.

My time with NJ was shared with Dr. Catherine Traynor and Ms. Lesle Jansen which resulted in a variety of work related to climate change and access and benefit sharing. My work with Dr. Catherine Traynor centred on indigenous rights, community resources and bio-cultural protocols all of which served as a new insight into ongoing and detrimental effects of climate change in Southern Africa. The other half of the work I did at NJ focused on work related to indigenous communities on a national level alongside focusing on the ongoing activities related to Rooibos tea and a little bit of everything in between.

The variety and unexpected quantity and quality of work is something which I very much enjoyed while working with NJ. On any given day, you may be involved in workshops, interviews, meetings, conferences and field work with communities which really demonstrates the value of the work that everybody with NJ does. These daily activities bring together knowledge of the law, political aspects and science. 

Early morning view over the Richtersveld
(Photo credit: Andrew Williamson)

I was fortunate enough to participate in two field work trips, the first being to Kuboes in the Richtersveld area with the Nama people and the second to the Bushbukridge area in Mpumulanga where we met the Kukula traditional practitioners. Both of these areas are certainly not on the ‘tourist trail’ so to speak, but nevertheless provided experiences and personal interactions with community members which will certainly not be forgotten. The Kuboes trip focused on engaging with the community and a follow up to previous activities. With the Kukula, NJ reviewed the ongoing projects with the community and established future areas of work and objectives.

Overall an internship with NJ will provide a unique experience where you will be able to actively participate in every aspect of an NGO with a supportive and interesting team around you. Not only will you learn a significant amount of information related to South Africa both past and present but also the livelihoods and cultures of the communities NJ works with. And it goes without saying you have the opportunity to spend some quality time in the city of Cape Town which is superb! 

Internships with Natural Justice: A personal reflection by Julia Roettinger

Julia & Gerren - Planning the Climate Justice Workshop
(Photo credit: Cath Traynor)

Julia Roettinger reflects on her two months as an intern with Natural Justice's Cape Town Hub and the Climate Change Program

Natural Justice certainly does not make you feel like a typical intern. Instead you gain valuable hands-on experience as well as an insight in the office work of a small NGO, led by a dedicated team, in the centre of Cape Town.

My two-month internship was everything I was hoping for and more. As an international Master’s student at UCT I was assisting Dr Cath Traynor with the fairly new Climate Change Program at Natural Justice, which aims to empower indigenous peoples through rights-based adaptation approaches together with communities. My tasks included contributing to a policy/academic paper on climate change impacts and the right to food in Southern Africa with a particular focus on indigenous peoples which will probably be published soon. In addition to that I was given the opportunity to drive up to Kuboes, a small place close to the Namibian border inhabited by the Nama people, where we facilitated a work shop on climate change for the Kuboes youth group. This turned out to be an amazing and also eye-opening experience. We heard about climate change impacts from first hand and I realized how urgent the problem actually is for those vulnerable groups. No matter how much the “international community” and the national government tries to mitigate we, and especially remote and rural communities, have to find ways to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. So what can be done? And how can Natural Justice assist? I realized how important Natural Justice’s work is.

Julia fitting in some studying after the Peer-to-Peer Activities
(Photo credit: Cath Traynor)

Just when I thought my internship could not get more interesting Cath asked me to come along with her to Nieuwoudtville in the Northern Cape to be part of a peer-to-peer learning exchange with the local community and “our” Kuboes youth group. We stayed at a fully self-sustainable ecolodge where we were guests of the NGOs Indigo Development & Change and Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) who made it an inspiring and very informative trip. I could literally see the excitement in the young adults’ eyes. They could not wait to get home and engage with their elders’ knowledge in order to find adaptation solutions. I believe that it is about those kind of experiences that passionate people like Cath work and live for.

They say timing is everything and perhaps my timing for this internship was just right but I truly believe that Natural Justice has so much to offer for interns throughout the year. I have had an incredible time learning about South Africa, its indigenous peoples and climate change and I can now say that it was one of the most exciting and interesting internships I have done so far.

Looking for part-time or full-time Intern to support NJ in New York City

Who is Natural Justice?

Natural Justice: Lawyers for Communities and the Environment is a young and fast-paced non-profit organisation specialising in human rights and environmental law. We are an African pioneering team of legal practitioners, who conduct comprehensive research on environmental and human rights law, support communities and local organisations, provide technical advice to governments and intergovernmental organisations, and engage in key international processes in pursuit of environmental justice. Natural Justice works in a number of African countries, with its headquarters in Cape Town and teams in Kenya, Benin and USA.

What are we looking for?

Natural Justice is looking for a part time or full time intern who will support the Executive Director, based out of New York City. The intern is expected to support the ED in a number of her responsibilities, in particular relating to communications and fundraising activities.

What’s on offer?

Natural Justice is a close-knit and nurturing collective that places emphasis on facilitating opportunities for the professional and personal growth of its members. Joining Natural Justice will also give the successful candidate a chance to work with a passionate and highly professional team in a fast-paced environment and gain valuable work experience. The successful candidate will get a close look at the day-to-day management challenges of a young international NGO. The length of the internship is open-ended but we expect a minimum stay of 3 months. The internship will be unpaid. The successful candidate can work from home but will be encouraged to work out of Natural Justice’s small office in Brooklyn.

Minimum skills and experience required:

• Some background in the field of human rights and/or environmental justice.
• Good writing skills for different platforms and audiences, ranging from social media, fundraising proposals to academic publications;
• Experience with different social media platforms
• Ability to work well under pressure with minimal supervision;
• Ability to multi-task, be flexible and work in varying conditions.

Application process:

Deadline: 30 September 2016 

Email your application to Johanna von Braun (johanna@naturaljustice.org).

Include a motivation letter that indicates why you would like to work for Natural Justice and a detailed CV.

What's it like to intern with Natural Justice?

Quirine Govers, International Intern with Natural Justice February-May 2016 reflects on her experience based with the Cape Town Office.

Quirine

My internship at Natural Justice, Cape Town has given me more than I ever could have imagined. Arriving in mid-February I was tasked with helping to develop a shadow report for the United Nations(!). The report focused on the current situation for the indigenous people of South Africa. Whilst interning I was also able to help develop other projects, including the Traditional Knowledge Bill in South Africa and the Khwe Bio-cultural Community Protocol.

The invaluable experience I got from working at Natural Justice was in part not only due to the interesting projects that I was working on but also the colleagues who worked alongside me. Their passion and enthusiasm were truly inspiring, in particular Yvette Fleur, indigenous fellow, and Lesle Jansen, my internship supervisor.
One of my most memorable experiences is a trip to Bwabwata National Park in Namibia where I worked on the Khwe Bio-cultural Community Protocol. The focus of which is to assert the rights, challenges and visions as a community for the Khwe, a San-grouping in Namibia. Living and working amongst them, I got to fall asleep to sounds of Hyena’s howling and waking to the growls of Hippos. The Khwe let me become a part of their culture, helping with traditional cold burnings that prevent wildfires, as well as teaching me how they track animals. Whilst it is nice to learn about different cultures in a classroom or at work, it does not quite compare to eye-opening experience of real-life interactions.

If you have any interest in Human Rights, Indigenous People and Environmental Law then I highly recommend working at Natural Justice, you will not be disappointed.

Leopard print, Bwabwata National Park, Namibia.

Elephants, Bwabwata National Park, Namibia

Intern Lorna Born reflects on Participatory Action Reserach with the Nama Community in the Richtersveld, South Africa

We left Cape Town early on Monday morning, driving northerly while the sun drifted over us, settling down in the west as we stopped for the night in Springbok. After an interview in the morning with municipality officials from the Richtersveld Municipality, we continued our driving to arrive in the afternoon in Kuboes where we met up with our community guide, Gerren. We soon discovered that time moves differently in the desert and we found ourselves adjusting to a new clock. This clock didn’t have numbers but rather activities. Sunlight dictated waking hours and insects directed when we could sleep. Our chalet was located right on the bank of the Orange River and the lush green that crowded the banks contrasted starkly with the expansive desert that surrounded us.

It proved pretty tough to track down some of the pastoralists as their lifestyles involve moving around the desert and grazing their stock. Stock posts showed where they’d settle own for the night but the day involved constant movement. We drove around bumpy, rocky roads just outside the Richtersveld Transfrontier Park searching for pastoralists, usually sticking near to the river as vegetation was densest here. We completed several interviews with Gerren, who organized the meet ups by gathering information on where the pastoralists might possibly be and by being our translator. For most of the interviews, we sat on chairs under the trees or scattered around a fire with a potjie in it. One interview took place in a house in Kuboes – a small town within the Richtersveld World Heritage Site. We were welcomed into homes and stock posts and the interviews were carried out without a hitch and before we knew it, our time in the Richtersveld was over.

We drove to Port Nolloth on Friday afternoon to stay the night after our interview in Kuboes. Mercifully, we arrived in Cape Town on Saturday afternoon and thus had time to readjust our internal clocks to cope with traffic, slog and being indoors. 

This blog is the personal views of Lorna Born. Lorna successfully completed a two-month voluntary internship with the Climate Change Program at Natural Justice, she has a Bachelors degree in Marine Biology and Environmental and Geographical Sciences from the University of Cape Town.

International Fellow, Luchino Ferraris reflects on his internship with Natural Justice

My four-month internship period at Natural Justice (from January to the end of April 2016) was not just a high level professional training, but also an unforgettable life experience.

With an elegant office situated at the sixth floor of the prestigious “Mercantile Building” – one of the most traditional and well-preserved buildings in Cape Town, located at the heart of the Central Business District (CBD) – Natural Justice is a team of professional and committed people primarily fighting for indigenous peoples’ rights on a national and a global scale and drawing on a wide array of tools (legal, political, scientific) to reach this aim.

If anybody reading this post has in mind the cliché of the intern making photocopies twelve hours a day, please forget about it and keep on reading. On the contrary, the team immediately welcomes you and makes you feel involved in its projects, always giving you the possibility to have a say in the organization and encouraging you to adopt a personal and critical view at every stage of the work.

Thanks to my legal background - and particularly in international and environmental law, acquired during my undergraduate in “Law” at the University of Milan and in the master (LLM) “Global Environment and Climate Change Law” at the University of Edinburgh - I focused on numerous legal and political-related issues such as the research and drafting of a working paper on the outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the drafting of a policy brief on the Right to Food and Food Security in Southern Africa and at international level, the elaboration of strategies to defend indigenous peoples’ rights at judicial level and the development of plans to raise awareness on the protection of traditional knowledge and intellectual property rights.

The carrying out of such tasks is reflected in my dynamic daily life at the office which involved desktop research, team meetings, interviews with other researchers and politicians, as well as the participation in workshops, conferences and the frequent contact with the teaching staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT). On this point, the one-week field work we conducted in the Richtersveld desert (Northern Cape) with the Nama community definitely deserves a special mention.

On a personal note, I wish to stress the serious, transparent and respectful attitude of the whole team, with whom I undertook not only a professional, but also a human relationship. I therefore strongly recommend such an experience to everyone who wishes to undertake a highly professionalizing experience and to spend a magnificent period in the gorgeous Cape Town.

Post by Luchino Ferraris.

Call for Internship Applications: Natural Justice-India

Natural Justice: Lawyers for Communities and the Environment is a non-profit organization registered in South Africa, with additional offices in India, Malaysia and New York City. Natural Justice’s mission is to facilitate full and effective participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities in the development and implementation of laws and policies relating to conservation and customary uses of biodiversity and the protection of associated cultural heritage. Natural Justice works at the local, regional, national, and international levels with a range of partners. 

Natural Justice (India) is inviting applications for two internship positions. The interns will be involved in projects related to work in Kutch, Gujarat, and the Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan, both of which are part of a broader project supported by the Ford Foundation. Please note that both the positions are unpaid.

Location: The interns will be expected to work out of the Natural Justice office in Bangalore. 

Deadline for applications: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. Please see below for more information and application requirements for each position. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Internships: Taking the plunge!

The season for interns is not yet finished at Natural Justice. 2009 has seen the introduction of an internship programme aimed at providing students or recent graduates with an interest in environmental law, community development or similar fields the opportunity to work within the organisation. This year has seen interns working on research papers and concept notes, and assisting Natural Justice within various projects.

Feedback has been positive so far: The interns, coming from varied backgrounds and countries ranging from the United States and Canada to Pakistan, have all enjoyed both the work experience and the opportunities they have had to explore South Africa during down-time. They have sky-dived, bungee-jumped and swum with the sharks in False Bay. They have plunged into the project work with equal zeal, and all hope to return soon.