Avis sur Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain,

The time I spent at the Paris bureau of ADHRB was incredibly rewarding. As a young graduate taking a gap year to confirm my professional orientation before starting a Masters, I learnt more than what I expected to get out of a six-months internship. Not only did I get direct experience with the dynamics and tools of advocacy (how to design and launch a campaign, engage discussions with decision-makers....) but also with practices and prominent actors in the human rights field (local and international activists, NGO representatives, human rights national ambassadors ...) and the political world (deputies, ministries...). As I enriched my knowledge of the Gulf region, I was also able to enrich my perspective and comfort the direction of my career path by directly interacting and exchanging with representatives of all-sized NGOs as well as governmental officials and a diverse array of professionals. What was particularly special at ADHRB was that beyond developing valuable hard skills in things such as advocacy practices, campaign-building, political and broader communication, I also could read up on and explore in practice international law, UN mechanisms, international and domestic public policy - with the opportunity to be in the 'fire of the action' and interacting with high-level actors, your time can be as ambitiously valuable as you will want to make it. As much as it is a consequential amount of work, every task is engaging and the Executive Director leaves you the necessary space you need to be self-starting and develop your autonomous decision-making skills in the field all whilst guiding you in the process. With him, our team had weekly calls to discuss progress, ongoing tasks, questions and he always made sure everything was clear as well as he made himself available outside of those calls whenever it was needed and provided feedback on daily reports. He showed support and was encouraging as he kept track of our team's work, not letting quality of the work done go unnoticed. If you have an idea, or that you feel your research leads to a new and good track, he will listen and guide you into realizing it. ADHRB is an organization that gives you a chance to build, test out and develop your skills on a human and professional level. This is the perfect opportunity for someone who is looking to put their energy into a cause and an organization that will give back.