11 Feb EU4EU internship experiences during COVID- Richard Claviere
Roma, 11 February 2021
Richard Claviere carried out his Masters degree in International Relations at the University of Caen, in France. “My university entered the EU4EU program last year, and thanks to my professor who told me about it I was able to get a 6 months internship in Rome”, he says.
“I was working in EuLabTech, a small NGO where I assisted the managers in writing projects and social networking”, he explains. The pandemic started right before he was supposed to begin his internship, so he had to start remotely: “I worked from home for two and a half months, until we were able to travel again. I arrived in Rome in July and started working there until november”, he says. “It was pretty weird living in Rome without tourists”, he jokes.
Luckily, the city wasn’t in lockdown during the summer, so he was able to go to the office almost everyday of the week. “We worked in a coworking office, so we had to wear masks all the time, but either way, the work environment was great and I enjoyed a lot of my time there”, he says. “Unfortunately, many projects and events had to be cancelled, but my tutors were really great and tried to keep me involved despite the pandemic”, he says.
“Working from home in France was hard, I don’t like remote work, but they gave me extra tasks. I assisted seminars and extra classes to be busy to contrast the lack of work during the beginning of the pandemic, especially April and May. So at the end it was a good experience”.
Thanks to his internship and with the help of his tutors, Richard got a job in Sardinia. “During the last two weeks of my internship I started looking for jobs, and one of my tutors recommended an NGO, so I sent my CV and the next day I got an interview and right now I’m working there”, he explains. “It was great, I got very lucky, because I would have never found it if it weren’t for my tutor”, he highlights. “Learning more Italian during my internship definitely helped a lot as well”.
“The EU4EU experience really helped me, without the grant I could not have afforded to go to Rome and thanks to that and despite COVID, I got a job much quicker than I expected”, he concludes.
