The intern reports – goodbye!

My internship at PAX has come to an end. During the internship, I saw the adoption of the Nuclear Ban Treaty and the Nobel Peace Prize going to ICAN change the narrative: this really is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons,

If I had to characterize the Nonukes team in the 400 words remaining I would like to describe the team in a few adjectives:

Resilient. No matter what political game is played, the team are showing resilience. Nuclear weapons have to be banned from this world, no matter what.

Dialogue. I guess it’s a quality from the internet era: communication is key. Whatsapp, Facebook, Trello, Twitter…. All types of online tools are used to stay in touch with each other and keep each other motivated. At the end of a meeting the list of things to talk about is smaller and the to-do list bigger than ever before.

Small. It’s a small team. But their achievements are big. Susi and the team have tremendeous amounts of knowledge and are able to quickly assemble different bits and pieces to create a new picture of a certain silo, company or partner organisation.

Creative, organized and hectic would be the three final adjectives I want to add to this great and slightly overwhelming team. Everybody works in a synchronized way. Each person knows the strengths of the other people present in the team and everybody has a similar goal: ban nuclear weapons.

On a personal level I learnt a lot throughout this internship. I learnt how to work with big amounts of data, to have fun while working, to understand how different ways of approaching organizations to divest and I learnt a lot of interpersonal skills. But most importantly I would like to thank Susi Snyder for this amazing internship opportunity as well as Maaike Beenes, Selma van Oostwaard, Miriam Struyck and Michel Uiterwaal for being awesome colleagues!