Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee

The organization supports projects in areas such as health education, HIV/STI prevention and treatment, mental health, anti-trafficking, children’s education and sports programs, client care services, educational/vocational training, and economic empowerment through their micro-banking cooperative. Other recent projects have focused on demonstrating feasibility and acceptability for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention with sex workers in Kolkata and harder to reach rural areas, including gay and bisexual men and transgender women. Durbar has also expanded efforts to support other labor sectors that socially marginalized women work in, specifically, domestic workers and construction workers. Durbar places a strong focus on community organizing and community ownership of its projects, leading to sustainable community-based interventions. The current year’s priority topic area will be the impact of COVID-19 on the lives and livelihoods of sex workers and their families from a collaborative mixed-methods study with UCLA.  Data collection was planned for spring 2022 with focus of summer 2024 being data analyses and publication/presentation preparation.

Tasks intern will work on: Interns would be involved in analysis of existing data, case study, developing research protocol and project proposal, program evaluation, and capacity building on monitoring and evaluation.

Category: Non-profit Organization

Skills required

  • Appropriate attitude and skill to interact with socially marginalized communities such as sex workers and their family members, as well as peer staff and monitoring and evaluation staff and leaders at Durbar
  • Flexibility in availability to meet remotely (typically via WhatsApp, Skype or Zoom) in evenings and early mornings for ~13 hour time zone differences between India and Pacific Time zone
  • Experience with or willingness to learn basic survey data cleaning and basic statistical analyses (or more advanced if had coursework), and/or qualitative data coding (using Dedoose online mixed-methods software).

Internship location: Remote, but you will be working with folks in Kolkata, India. Option for in-person work if interested in travel to India. Organization contact, Dr. Ray, can support student in finding low cost room and board.

Language competency: N/A

Internship time frame: Summer 2024, June - September 2024

Hours per week: Flexible

Financial support: Each student intern will receive a $1,000 stipend for their participation

Organization ContactProtim Ray, PhD

Faculty Liaison: Dallas Swendeman, PhD

The deadline for applications is January 21, 2024 at 11:59 PM.

Apply here!