Naila Kirimova

Having received a list of NGOs with internship opportunities from the Human Rights department at Central European University, I immediately chose MDAC. The reason for that was that the topic of my thesis was “Equal Working Rights for Mentally Disabled People”, which established my deep interest in disability rights. When applying for an internship at MDAC, I was looking forward to gaining some work experience and finding good material for my thesis, but I received much more than I expected!

MDAC gives their interns an opportunity to take part in a real job. If an internship for you is just copying papers, making coffee and spending most of the time on facebook, you definitely should not apply to MDAC. At the time I began my internship, MDAC was starting to develop its new web site, which everyone was excited about and I was very glad that I got a chance to be involved in that process. My job also consisted of doing research on international bodies that dealt with the rights of persons with mental disabilities. I also prepared a summary of materials which was to be uploaded on the web-site. The summary included basic information about the human rights body, the kind of protection it provided for PWDs and how they could bring their claims.

Doing an internship at MDAC is a serious job. Seeing how much people work and what a great job they do, I was really glad to make such a difference. MDAC was planning to arrange a training event and invite NGOs from former USSR countries. So, another task for me was to find the contacts of NGOs in Azerbaijan that work in the field. I was doing my internship parallel with my doing my LLM at Central European University. I did not have a fixed schedule at school and I was afraid that it could create some troubles for my internship. Fortunately, I was wrong. My supervisor was flexible as to whether I would do my job in the morning or in the afternoon. She even suggested I could work from home if I had difficulties coming to the office – what mattered was the final result. I strongly recommend an internship at MDAC for those who are interested in mental health law and human rights.

In, addition during the weekends you will have a chance to explore amazing sites of Hungary and neighboring countries.

Naila Kirimova

Intern at MDAC in January 2010