Project Report Cordaid

The internship project at Cordaid Urban Matters (UM) was interesting and informative. Our first impression of UM was the fact that it was at a crucial phase in the transition process towards more tender financing. Consequently, we felt the importance of the final results of our internship as it would largely help UM to head to the right direction.  Assigned with clear but challenging tasks, we started our 3-month unique experience with great excitement. We first tried to get a deeper insight into the organization through reading relevant materials and arranging meetings with the various project coordinators of UM. These meetings not only enabled us to conclude the unique selling points of UM, which helped us accomplish the tasks, but also impressed us with the meaningful and great work that UM was doing. As one of the interns’ educational backgrounds was urban development and management, this information was even more valuable since it provided her with what really happened in the field.

However, problems came after we gathered all the necessary information: how should we put them into an organized way? We came up with different solutions to tackle the problem but could not decide on which one to take. As a result, we went to our mentor for help. As an expertise in the field, our mentor from KPMG suggested us to look at things from a macro point of view and think about the framework. This led us to rethink what UM was requiring from the internship project and what could eventually help UM throughout the transition procedure, which in the end made our deliverables more realistic and helpful. We finally decided to establish a database that helped the organization to sort out the information needed in order to tender.

The week before our internship finished, we had the chance to present what we had done to the whole UM team. It was a great compliment for us that every team member was satisfied with the results and more importantly, they all appreciated our recommendations for UM. For us, this internship provided us with all ins and outs of UM and the tender process. We would like to thank everyone within UM, and Cordaid, SDN and our mentor for their help and cooperation.

- Xinxin Zhang -