Hello everyone, I am Martina, a second year HRG student, and last semester I did my internship at Save The Children Italia for two months. During this time, I had the opportunity to work alongside brilliant professionals who helped me better understand the process of advocacy within a NGO working on children’s rights and improve my skills in this field.
A few words about myself: I studied languages in high school and then started my bachelor’s degree in International Relations, thinking I would end up choosing the diplomatic career path. However, I soon developed a strong interest for the field of human rights protection, which led me to apply to the Human Rights Master at the University of Padova. During my first year here, after following the course of Children’s Rights taught by Save the Children experts, I decided to apply to the vacancy that was opened during the summer for HRG students as I wanted to experience working in such a large NGO, specifically in the Advocacy & Policy Department.
In particular, I was part of the Gruppo CRC coordination team at Save the Children Italia. The Gruppo CRC (Gruppo di Lavoro per la Convenzione sui dirittidell’infanzia e dell’adolescenza) is a “network open to any association, NGO, cooperative, foundation and any other stakeholder from the third sector dealing with the promotion and protection of children’s rights in Italy”. It was established in 2000 and is coordinated by Save The Children Italia. Its mission is to “promote the full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Italy”, while its mandate is “to guarantee an independent, permanent and up-to-date monitoring system on CRC implementation, agreed upon by all members, and to implement relevant advocacy actions”. In more than 20 years of activity, the Gruppo CRC has published three Supplementary Reports to the United Nations, eleven CRC Annual Monitoring Reports, as well as two Reports with disaggregated data for each Italian region.
I was involved with a supportive role in institutional communication and networking activities, awareness raising activities of the Gruppo CRC work, organization of events with advocacy purposes and dissemination of reports produced by the organization. In particular, my main tasks as an intern were publishing events and writing relevant news on children’s rights developments at the national, regional and/or local level, as well as assist more in general in the management of the Gruppo CRC website. Moreover, I helped with the revision and editing of the second edition of the regional report of the Gruppo CRC (I diritti dell’infanzia e dell’adolescenza in Italia – I dati regione per regione 2021), which was published in November 2021 in occasion of World Children’s Day. I also contributed to the organization of the national launch event of the report through activities of letter writing and mapping of potential institutional guests for the events.
During my internship, I felt like my tutor and colleagues were supportive and responsive despite the challenges of working remotely, which I would say was the main drawback in this experience. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed my internship at Save the Children Italia as it gave me a real perspective on how advocacy works within a non-governmental organization devoted to the promotion and protection of children’s rights and it heightened my intention to explore this career path in the future.
Written by Martina Villa
Edited by Giulia Rosina
After studying languages and graduating in international relations, Martina, 23 years old, is pursuing her studies in the field of human rights. In particular, she is passionate about children’s and refugees rights. Currently, Martina is an Erasmus student in Paris, France.