Ms Carol-Anne Graham (left) and Ms Stephanie Nemcsok in the Gifts Room.
(Image: Nelson Mandela Foundation)Ms Carol-Anne Graham and Ms Stephanie Nemcsok, who have been working as interns at the Nelson Mandela Foundation for the past four months, headed back to Canada in the first week of September.
Ms Graham and Ms Nemcsok were working with the Foundation as part of an initiative between the Foundation and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies. The initiative, now in its second year, places students at the Foundation’s Centre of Memory during the Northern Hemisphere summer, when the university has an extended vacation.
Ms Nemcsok helped with the development of documentation for physical artifacts relating to Mr Mandela, and Ms Graham assisted with reviewing and developing the Foundation’s IT service contracts. Both brought expertise that was needed at the Foundation.
“The Foundation has been highly enriched by their presence here,” said senior programme officer for the Foundation’s Centre of Memory and Dialogue and co-ordinator of the internship programme, Mr Shadrack Katuu. “We hope that it has also enriched their professional careers.”
For Ms Graham and Ms Nemcsok, the experience was humbling. “We were treated with the same respect as everyone else even though we are only interns, and that was huge,” said Ms Nemcsok, just before she left. “Every single staff member extended themselves with patience, understanding and instruction.”
The two agreed that meeting Mr Mandela was the highlight of their visit.
“Carol-Anne came running in and said, ‘We’re visiting Nelson Mandela in five minutes!’” remembered Ms Nemcsok.
“We planned what we were going say when we met him and I was thinking, ‘How is a person supposed to feel five minutes before meeting him?’ I was really nervous,” laughed Ms Graham.
“We talked about Canada and shook hands,” said Ms Nemcsok. “He is such a warm, friendly person. He held our hands through the whole time.”
Although many high-profile visitors passed through the Foundation during their internship, the two were rarely flustered on the frontline. “When you work for the Foundation, often your job effectively ends when the famous people arrive,” says Ms Nemcsok. “You just get working on the next project.”
Carol-Anne Graham and the Foundation's Financial Administrator Yase Godlo.
(Image: Nelson Mandela Foundation)Ms Graham’s job entailed looking at the Foundation’s current IT services contracts and agreements to ensure they were fair to the Foundation. With her experience as an IBM employee, she brought considerable expertise in assessing IT service agreements from a vendor’s perspective. “It was interesting to be on the client side, rather than the vendor side,” she said, adding that a few IT companies were not expecting her questions.
Ms Nemcsok was involved in processing the object collection, which includes Mr Mandela’s considerable gift collection of over 1500 items.
“To see the love for Nelson Mandela from every walk of life has been incredible,” she remarked.
From a signed photograph of Ms Evelina Tshabalala, the HIV-positive former domestic worker who is now a mountaineer, to autographed CDs from Mr Quincy Jones and an autographed copy of Mr David Rockefeller’s Memoirs, Ms Nemcsok says she’s been touched by people’s love of Madiba.
Some material couldn’t be accessioned into the collection, such as food, she says. Actress Emma Thompson sent through a couple of DVDs and jars of jam.
For Ms Graham and Ms Nemcsok it hasn’t been all work and no play, with visits to the Pilanesberg, Parys and Blood River, among others. “The people we work with have been really helpful. They have exposed us to the rest of the country.”
Dialogue for Justice Programme Co-ordinator Ms Naomi Warren said the interns were “very hands-on” and open to being brought in at the last minute on all sorts of tasks. “In a sense, no matter how ‘meaningless’ the task was, it was meaningful [for them],” she said.
Ms Warren added the internship programme exposed the Foundation to new ways of thinking. “It’s good for the Foundation to have new faces with different experiences and backgrounds.”
“They were very keen and went the extra mile,” says Dr Mothomang Diaho, head of the Dialogue for Justice Programme. “We will miss them.”