Bo Jansen, Photo by: Judy Jacobse

Ever since I was young, I was fascinated with Asia’s history, culture and political landscape. After several trips to Asia during my Bachelor Anthropology en Development Sociology, I decided that I wanted to go into more depth on issues concerning the region. I was specifically fascinated by the political and economic developments of Indonesia, a country from which a part of family descends. The programme of Contemporary Asian Studies offered a broad social-scientific perspective on the region with the option to do field research in an  Asian country. I had a dream of working for an NGO that conducted development projects in Asia and I wanted to gain more experience in that field. During the programme I studied the Indonesian language and set off to the oil palm plantations in Kalimantan to research the ethnic conflicts.

Make children aware of global-societal problems

Freshly graduated I started my search for a job. After a couple of months I got hired at the Cross Your Borders Foundation as a Project Coordinator and I work here for over a year now. Cross Your Borders organises attractive educational projects on Dutch schools about development issues and makes children more aware of their role in global society. It is hard work, with a lot of responsibility but I have a great team of young colleagues around me and I am delighted that I can develop my project management skills. I still have the ambition to work on development projects in Asia and my current job might be a first good step towards that direction.

Gain knowledge during your  master year

As a student of the Master’s Contemporary Asian Studies I developed a lot of important skills. My writing has enormously improved during that year as for my presentation skills. As a coordinator I have to present our organisation, our projects and my activities in front of schools, companies but also in front of our own team. During my Master I gained a lot of knowledge on developmental and societal issues, which I use daily in examples for the pupils that participate in our projects or during thematic trainings that I lead.

My advice for all current and prospective Master's students is to use their time as a student to accumulate a lot of interesting and informative experiences. Do an internship as a part of your programme, learn a language, get acquainted with an organisation you find intriguing.  Make contact with all sorts of people, these contacts can give you fresh ideas and might be useful when you are eventually looking for a job. Finally, make sure you combine a dedication to the topics you find interesting with a clear idea of how you could translate that interest to a position in the job market.

Cross Your Borders has job openings for young graduates. Vacancies are always posted on our LinkedIn page (see https://www.linkedin.com/company/cross-your-borders) and on the job vacancy page of oneworld.nl.