GSPIA Career Services: Internship Blog

Serbia....not Siberia

“Serbia… Isn’t it really cold there?” “Where is it located?” “You’re going to Slovakia or something like that, right?” “So, you chose to go there?”

These are all questions I was asked when I told people I was going to Belgrade, Serbia this summer. Most people don’t know where it is or what’s going on here—in fact, one of the forms I filled out still had Yugoslavia as an option, instead of Serbia. People here in Serbia don’t quite understand my choice, either. Most have asked if I came here on purpose or if I had a choice in where to do my internship. Much to their surprise, I tell them, yes, I did come here on purpose.

To be fair, I wasn’t originally supposed to be in Serbia. For months I planned to go to Ukraine—in fact, about two weeks after the internship in Kiev was officially approved, the protests and fights broke out. When that fell through, one of my professors suggested Serbia because he has a lot of friends and connections here that could be good friends and resources for me to have around. So, two weeks ago, I flew to Belgrade—my first time in Serbia and my first time out of the United States.

If you would have told me five years ago that I would be spending a summer in Serbia, I probably wouldn’t have believed you—especially since I doubt I would have known where it was. My journey here really starts in my freshman year of college, when I learned about human trafficking, which led to me focusing my Writing degree on researched writing, as well as getting minors in Sociology and Political Science.

My passion to fight human trafficking also led to me reading a fiction book on human trafficking in Russia. During the previous three years of college, I had focused my research on domestic trafficking in the US, but this book on Russia literally changed my life. Sometimes, when I learn about certain things, I just have this urge to learn more—as much as I can, as fast as I can. This is how I felt about human trafficking, and this is how I felt about Eastern Europe.

I spent fall of 2012 interning for the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Office, where I also connected with a woman who had worked in Kiev, Ukraine doing anti-human trafficking work for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). She told me that I should learn a regional language and find out more about the culture. And she also told me that if I sent her my resume and an introductory paragraph, she would forward it to some of her former colleagues.

Long story short, I had an informational interview with one of the staff at the IOM Regional Office Vienna for South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, who told me to let him know if I ever wanted an internship with them.

Five months later, I started the Summer Language Institute at Pitt for Beginning Russian, and in the fall I started the MID-Human Security program at GSPIA—a school I chose largely for my ability to focus on human trafficking prevention and Eastern Europe. In late fall, I contacted IOM to set up an internship with them in Kiev, Ukraine. A few weeks later, protests started at Maidan.

When I chose to take a Balkans politics class from a professor who has spent ample amounts of times in the region, I didn’t know how useful it would be. At the time, I still planned to go to Ukraine, but after several weeks of waking up to dozens of news updates on my iPad detailing the increasing fights and conflicts in the country, I finally decided to contact IOM and ask about the Belgrade office.

Thankfully, because of my Balkans course, I came much more prepared, knowing about the history and conflict in the region. The country and region have suffered from wars, invasions, and conflicts for centuries. In fact, during my class, I got to the point where I couldn’t even talk about it without tearing up.

But these people are resilient. They are proud, strong, lively, and also extremely helpful. So, I’m here in Serbia. On purpose. Learning from native Serbs who care about trafficking and vulnerable people in their country. And I think this is exactly where I’m supposed to be this summer.

Allie, MID-HS, 2015

Personal blog: www.allieinserbia.wordpress.com

Instagram (for pics): alliereefer

*Author’s note: Serbia (not Siberia) is located in the Balkans peninsula, which is south of Hungary and to the east of Italy, in the same region as Greece. It was part of the former Yugoslavia, but it has been its own country since 2006, when it became the Republic of Serbia.