Last Day of Work

Today is my last day of work with Vipani, and it's my last day in Nairobi for this summer.

I finished my deliverables yesterday so there's not much to do on my final day. Looking back, it's been an extremely fulfilling month. I need some more time to reflect on my experience, but for the work, I have a few key takeaways -

1. People with pure nonprofit experience and those previously in for-profit sector but having switched to nonprofit are very different. The former appear very passionate about what they are doing. They often experienced poverty or the problem they are trying to help solve by themselves. They have tons of observations from the field and insights of the 'real world' problem. The latter, they are probably as passionate but they don't talk as passionately as the former. They are rational, analytical, and result-driven. They don't see the real world problem as much but they have insights too and can often deliver in a concise speech that I'd easily register with. For that matter, I think I'd like to work with the latter.
2. I am more into the idea of social entrepreneurship than before, i.e. concept of finding ways for the private sector to support the poor and make money at the same time (e.g. sustainable sourcing, marketing products needed by the poor, etc.). During my time at Vipani, I had interactions with people from KickStart, an NGO that develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes pumps for poor farmers. It's more of a social enterprise than a pure nonprofit organization. Their pump could help farmers increase their annual income by tenfold or even more. This encouraging result has made me believe in their vision/model, and social enterprise at large.
3. I am still interested in working in the civil sector but if I ever to join the nonprofit world right after school, I need to work with a group of people with business background. This is related to point #1. What I found out throughout the internship was that I love passionate people with pure nonprofit background but I am just too impatient to be a great listener of long, endless, (sometimes pointless), repetitive talk.