Internship Cycling paths and potential for PA @m13-milankharel - Tumblr Blog

Learning goals and lessons

My internship started with some previously set learning goals, being an intern at a research project on how built environment features is associated with children physical activity after school hours, the main learning goals were to i) carry out literature review on built environment and PA after school hours, ii) Finding out built environment assessment tools iii) carrying out field audits and coding data from the audits. The first few weeks of internship was spent on carrying literature review and finding appropriate tool for the field audits. Coming after the summer holidays, the field audits were conducted and lost data was recollected ( see previous posts for more detailed explanation on how individual learning goals were accomplished).

Apart from the previously set learning goals, being an intern at a research project taught me some good lessons about research. First being, research and data collection can take quite long time. It is important to store data carefully and the need of being more careful, if you are using paper based media to collect data as they can be misplaced easily. Also, I recommend having backups even if someone is using digital and online medias. It also taught me to work independently and help develop my problem solving skills as I was working independently most of time during the data collection process.

m7-nicholasscotland-blog

Advice for future interns – “Just Do It!”

Looking back at my internships, both this and the previous last year in Swaziland (http://m7-nicholasscotland.tumblr.com/), my advice to future interns and myself would be not to be scared and just do it!

When trying to find an internship we often hesitate and overthink everything, in school we learn about cultural sensitivity and language barriers. And yes, we have to be cultural sensitive and there will be language barriers, but as long as you present yourself in a proper manner and open to learn, follow directions and treat everyone with respect most barriers can be overcome, moreover, the power of a smile shall never be underestimated and can (almost) never be overused. When it comes to the language, interning in south San Diego we were told by many from Denmark it would be an issue not speaking Spanish, but it never was, everyone speaks English and the very few that have troubles with the dialect, sign language and smiles always save the day.

Conversely, being open and “just doing it” is important, however, as is planning and though I properly told myself the same last internship, I can only repeat myself and say planning is of the essence. One can “just do it”, when you have a plan b and c should something go wrong. Furthering this is having as much money as possible saved up before traveling, three months is a long time and money has a habit of flying out the pocket when traveling, furthermore, you are in a different country and it is sad to have money holding one back from achieving great experiences.

m13-milankharel

Advice from my classmate Nicholas for future interns after his two successful internships in Swaziland and USA

From paper to computer and coding

After collecting the data from the field audit and recollecting the lost data in a paper based format, the next step during my internship was to get those collected data in the computer and come up with appropriate ways of coding them. The task was to record 48 paper based audit sheets in a excel sheet and prepare code book for two of audit tools used for data collection. Recording data and preparing code book were somewhat tedious and time consuming but it felt great to get it done because those were the data I would be using to write my bachelor project.

How the collected data looks with its code

Small section from the codebook

Never loose your datas

As we all know collecting data is tedious and time consuming but what can be more painful is loosing the data you’ve already collected and having to recollect it again. Most of us use web based questionniares which makes it easier in terms of safely storing your data but if anyone is old school like me and use paper based forms then you’ve to be careful not to loose the paper forms.

As, I lost few papers from my audit. Last week, I had to spend some time recollecting datas from the audits I lost during the summer holidays.

#Neverlooseyourdatas #lessonlearned

Auditing active transport infrastructure around the schools

It’s soon time to get back to last few weeks of internship after a month long summer vacation.

As, an intern working on a research project on built in environment and its relation to children's and adolescent physical activity level, I am assigned a task to conduct the audits on built in environment in order to assess if it facilitates or discourages biking as a way of transportation to schools.

After a week of literature search on audit tools we came up two tools to collect data about the built in infrastructure.

Then, For a week I was biking around in my lovely white bike which unfortunately got stolen last weekend :( few schools in Copenhagen, Gentofte, Ishøj and Vallensbæk in order to carry on the audits about the built in environment for active transport. Well, The weather had been pretty mean to me during the audits. Sometimes it got windy like never before and blew away all my papers while sometime rain left me stuck for an hour in the middle of the audit.

First two weeks

Seems that everyone out on internship are having a great time all around the world and I am here around lovely Copenhagen- where it all started but there is nothing to complain when Copenhagen is blessed with strong rays of sunlight, there is NBA finals on the move and lined up Euro cup. What a time of the year it is!!

Taking you all to what I'm doing for my internship.

I am interning at a research project by our own teacher Chalida on how cycling path are associated with Physical activity level of adolescents.

My day starts around 9 in the morning at the little computer room next to E 18 in the school. Last two weeks has been identical in terms of what I am doing. Currently, I am doing literature review on how cycling to school is associated to adolescent physical activity level. During the past two weeks , I have come across 900 articles. The task has been to go through the literature and record the relevant ones.

how my screen looks :)

This week I will be researching about different cycling audit tools which I will be using to collect data during the later part of the internship.

The good thing about being in the school that you don’t miss the big rye bread sandwich from the sandwich shop in the basement.

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Since my Internship has now come to an end, I want to provide survival tips for future interns.

1. Start the application process early. Module 5 and 6 are hectic, and it can get quite stressful when focusing on school and also applying for internships at the same time. Already start on Module 4 -...

learning objectives and challenges

Learning objective I

Learn about the foods children’s are served, what kind of nutrients they contains, if they match national and WHO recommendation in relation to their age group.

During my 5th week here, we made a 7 day food record from few children from different age group. We used the unit like cup and spoon for the food record. We analyzed the nutrient contained in them. We made the use of the USDA food database in order to calculate the nutrient contained. Well, a lot of food we had was not listed in USDA food database and most of them didn't even had nutrient labeling which made our task quite challenging. Similar to most Nepalese diet, they consumed rice, breads, green vegetables and cereals most time during the week, meat few times a week and fish occasionally.

Learning objective II

Learn about the food hygiene and how foods are prepared in large setting; make emphasis on using local product to prepare healthy meal.

Since, my very first week there, I had been the part of kitchen team. I observed how foods were prepared for a large number of people. I observed the food hygiene, how clean the kitchen was and how food was stored. Well, one of the kitchen staff had great knowledge on European cuisine and had worked in Cyprus as a chef for many years. I had an opportunity to learn quite a lot of things with him. Well,the food storage system was not very great and we have frequent power cut which makes it worse. Additionally, PA Nepal also owns it's small farm house. Lot of things, they consume comes from their own farmhouse. so, we emphasized on buying the grocery frequently rather than buying it at one time and storing them.

Learning objective III

Improve my knowledge about different nutrient and their availability in foods, recommendation and results of deficiency.

In the final week of my internship we made an small presentation about different food, what nutrients they contain and what are the result of the being deficient. The challenge this time was lot of children there wasn't grown enough to understand it. So, we emphasized our presentation more on the kitchen staffs and older children.

Learning objective IV

Improve my communication skills and learn how the children and staffs perceive the importance of physical activity and how they incorporate Physical activities in their daily life.

During my internship apart from my learning objective, I was assigned some other task like keeping the record of children's medical and school profile, helping children with their homework and taking children to visit their parents which helped me to improve my communication skill to some extent.

Most of the Asian Education System is all about banking education, rote learning and long school hours. Nepal can't be the exception which doesn't leave children sufficient time for the physical activities and sports. Well, as I used to say before, South Asian society doesn't support Physical Activities. ( In most of the country of south Asia, people believe that physical activities are either for people with chronic diseases or athlete.) Observing the daily activities routine of both children and staffs, children were engaged in some kind of sports and also used to work in the organic farm house few times a week while administrative staffs spent their most time being sedentary and had long sitting hours.

#PANEPAL #willmissthisplace #endofinternship

Update from 4th and 5th week

Last two weeks has been somewhat identical to previous weeks in terms of tasks what I've been doing here. Prisoner Assistance Nepal being a organization that runs on a low budget couldn't afford to have very highly skilled people. Though there hasn't been a lot of new things for me to learn, I’m glad that I have an opportunity to put the things I learned into practice and meet a lot of new people .

In the last two weeks, we have made anthropometric measurement at the sankhu children home which have around 105 children. We've plotted it into the BMI chart and compared it with the result from their previous measurement. Majority of children have their BMI ranging from 14 to 19. As, we found that the average BMI of Nepalese people is 20.55 we thought that it was normal for them to have low body weight considering their past life.

After the measurement we presented the result to the staffs at PA Nepal at both children homes. We taught kids to monitor their own growth themselves and told them try it at least once in 3 months. We taught them to calculate the energy requirement for their body and to estimate the energy content in the food they consumed using USDA food database as Nepal government do not have such databases. We also presented them with the food based dietary guidelines issued by Nepal government.

Children’s busy calculating their Basal Metabolic Rate(BMR)

In the meantime, My fellow coworker nurse presented kids about proper way of brushing their teeth,washing hands, what vaccination are required for them and managed to do some menstrual talk with the girls.

We mostly spend our weekday at sankhu children home because it has a school inside the children home while we spend weekends and holidays at the other children home because they go to the school outside of their children home. It feels great to be there with as the children are so respectful and well-behaved.

At the beginning of 5th week we got an opportunity to travel a little bit. We visited prison at Chautara (150 km north from Kathmandu ) with some childrens and a staff. It felt great to see children meeting their parents. When children were busy spending time with their parents , we took a small tour inside the prison. Being a student of health for last one and half year, I have somewhat started to see things from the perspective of health. It was little bit disheartening to see the life condition of prisoner inside the prison but there was nothing that we could do about it.

After coming back from chautara, we have been working on analyzing the children’s diet and nutrient they consumed as we made children from different age group to record their 7 days dietary intake.

Last Friday we had a festival in Nepal called Holi( color festival) where we basically put colors at each others face and throw water at each other among friends and family. We spent sometime at the children home during Holi.

Will be posting more pictures shortly!!

So Far at Prisoners Assistance Nepal

As, One more week passes here in Crowdy Kathmandu, I feel fortunate to be a part of wide range of activities and experience a lot of new things. Here are few things that I've been part of here at PA Nepal in past weeks.

Prison Visit

Last Weekend I had an opportunity to visit prison in Kathmandu with a team from PA Nepal which included some children whose parents are in Kathmandu prison, my supervisor and some staffs.

We rescued 2 children who were residing in prison with their parents and brought them to our children home. Children spent some time with their parents. While, the children were busy spending time with their parent and my supervisor with paperwork for rescuing children out of prison, I spent my time talking to some prisoners about work of prisoners assistance Nepal. Parents were very thankful to prisoner assistance Nepal and we came back promising to see them soon again.

Arjun from PA Nepal opens the lock in prison to see his father.

Time to leave!!! see you soon mom!! :'( :(

Anthropometric Measurement of Children

This week me and a volunteer who is a nurse from New Zealand have conducted anthropometric measurement of children at Naya Bazar Children home. We measured Children’s height and weight. We later calculated BMI of each children and compared it with WHO recommendation. PA Nepal had record of children's from past measurement which made it easier to observe their growth pattern. We compared their growth with the WHO growth chart for height for age and BMI for age.

We found most of the children fall under lower category of BMI range, i.e less than 18.5 which WHO classifies as being underweight. As, I remember Benjamin saying during the classes that WHO recommendation not always applies to Asian people because of the different genetic makeup, we concluded that it was obvious that kids were underweight according to WHO chart.

Plotting children's growth record on WHO growth chart!!

We also observed the trend that girls entering teenage has slight decrease in their BMI which we believed was due to them starting to develop consciousness for their body image.

We observed that children seems to have low increase in their body mass while they have quite an increase in their body height. Children seem to have positive growth record when comparing it with their previous measurement while some of them had dropped in their BMI which was mainly because of high increase in height but low increase in body mass.

Wall Painting This week we ( me ,volunteers from a school in Saudi Arabia and some children ) also painted the wall at PA Nepal’s children library. We painted the hand print of all the children and staffs at PA Nepal in the library.

Volunteers from a British school in Saudi Arabia working hard !!! Intercultural sensitivity comes into practice!!

Meanwhile, the wall of dining room already had these information about food and nutrition.

Next week we will be making presentation on children homes. My friend will present about oral health while I plan to talk about food and nutrition with children and staffs!!

Stay tuned for more!!!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

#GNH #puttingthingsintopractice #PANEPAL

Hi Milan, I really enjoyed reading about Prisoners Assistance and your first week there. You have a good background description and it is very interesting to read. I understand that it is sensitive to take Photos. Please consider other ways of documenting your internship with Photos or videos in case you do not get permission. Is there somehow ways you could film yourself or have someone else film you while you e.g. do the anthropometric Measurements without showing the children's faces?

Hi Pernille, I have received the permission to take pictures. I will soon be posting more pictures :)

We rescued two kids from prison!!! Welcome to our children home :)

First week at Prisoners Assistance Nepal

This week I visited children homes at Kathmandu. Naya Bazar children home have around 40 children and sankhu children home have 101 children. These children are from different places in Nepal. Majority of children are between the age of 6-16, while few of them are below 6 and above 16 as well. Prisoners assistance Nepal have around 25 staffs which includes teachers, kitchen staffs, Nurses etc and few volunteers from Nepal and outside assisting them.

Childrens at Naya bazar home go to the local school nearby, while for the children at Sankhu home have provision to study at the children home up to grade 5 in a school called Junkiri school. Junkiri school also allows the childrens from outside to study. Children above 5th grade go to local school nearby. When children complete their secondary school, Prisoner assistance Nepal provides them some training and jobs to make them self sustainable and they are to stay outside of the children home.

Prisoner Assistance Nepal takes good care of their children. Children will have their health status measured frequently. Children with health issues are taken to hospital. Coincidentally, assessment of children's health status is happening next week at both children homes. I feel happy to be the part of the team and will be assisting a team of nurse and a teacher to perform anthropometric and other measurements like body temperature and blood pressure.

Prisoner assistance Nepal being a pretty sensitive place, I had to sign a contract that I’m not allowed to take pictures or video without their permission. As, I have written an application for the permission to take pictures, It might take sometime before I start posting some pictures.

Stay tuned!!!

While everything has been so great back home slow internet connection and back to left hand driving system after pretty long keeps bothering me!!

#firstweek backhome feelinggreat

About Prisoners Assistance (PA) Nepal

In Nepal, There is no organization obliged by law to take care of childrens of prisoners. When parents are imprisoned their childrens are forced to either reside with them in prison or on the streets where they are vulnerable to abuse, trafficking and exploitation.

Prisoners Assistance Nepal is a Non Governmental Organization founded in 2000 by Indira Rana Magar. Primarily, it works to provide basic needs like food, healthcare and education to the children of prisoners. It provides positive living environment where children have an opportunity to develop themselves disregarding their social and economic background. Currently, It takes care of more than 300 children and have four different children homes. Two of those children homes are located in Kathmandu valley, one in eastern part(Illam) and one in western part (Palpa) of Nepal. It provides childrens an opportunity to visit their parents frequently in order to keep the bonding between children and parents. It also works to provide children with real life skills that makes them independent and help them to reintegrate back to their own place. Additionally, It advocate against the use of children and unemployed people by criminal groups in different criminal activities like drug trafficking, theft and robbery. Prisoners Assistance Nepal also support for the income generation for vulnerable individuals affected by imprisonment.

The life of the prisoners is very tough in prison because of poor condition of housing, food and sanitation. Also, the behaviour to the prisoners by the workers make their lives even harder. Therefore, Prisoners Assistance Nepal advocates for basic and human rights to ensure welfare of prisoners.

Most of all, Prisoner Assistance Nepal stands with the goal of reducing crime across the whole country.

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Internship Cycling paths and potential for PA