Project Management Internship in Latvia

Hi everyone! Let me guess, now you are wondering who would want to spend his internship in the nearest neighbor country rather than in a warm weather region, far away from home, where everything is so unpredictable and exciting? Well, the truth is, that sometimes we should not count everything just by better weather conditions or kilometers apart, because we do not know, what kind of discoveries are waiting exactly right next to us!

Hence, last summer after my graduation from Vilnius University, where I gained a degree in Lithuanian philology, I became involved in Riga Technical University, particularly International Project Unit. No doubts – when I got accepted to this university I was extremely excited, taking account the fact that during my studies I have also spent 5 months of Erasmus mobility at University of Latvia and I had quite well understanding of Latvian language. Surely, me, as probably all the interns before the internship, worried a little bit about what I am going to face, but after I met my project’s team and the other colleagues, all my doubts were dissipated!

Thus, speaking specifically about my duties while staying in RTU, I had more than one responsibility, as there always was much work to do. I was working as Project Manager-Analyst, and yes, although it was absolutely different from the field that I gained a diploma in, I was told that I can learn things by doing them, within the practice, and this is very truth. I was assisting in development of new international academic collaboration networks, helped to coordinate a big scale student mobility projects, did descriptive analytics in framework of Erasmus+ KA1 programme for international mobility projects, which totally gave me a better understanding about Erasmus+ as a whole mechanism! I also worked with the preparation of official documentation for projects purposes, translated texts from Latvian to English and vice versa, made researches on state of art for Horizon 2020 project related to social innovations. Even more, I was lucky to attend seminars and workshops hosted by RTU and government agencies, not mentioning day to day communication with project partners.

Everything that I went through during my internship gave me amazing experience:

people that I met were always ready to help me,

strong background in project management principles,

developed intercultural communication skills, which will be very helpful in my future.

If you consider yourself as future intern, my advice is – go ahead, do not hesitate to try yourself and gain valuable experience!