Batch 7: Internship Experience

As I have mentioned before I actually made this arrangement on my own with the Deputy Prime Minister of Tonga. He attended my mother’s funeral in early January of this year to represent the government in paying their respect. This was a great opportunity under the circumstances to actually secure my internship opportunity.

Hon. Siaosi Sovaleni whose portfolios include the deputy prime minister position as well as the minister responsible for seven of Tonga’s largest governmental departments met me on my first day. The Honorable Minister informed me to pick whichever department that is appealing to me where I would be interested in learning as part of this internship. Although he gave me that opportunity, however he specifically requested that the information department needed help with its current policy.

The internship was a pathway for me to fulfill three goals that I initially hoped to achieve and they were;

a)      Learn Tonga’s Constitution, Acts and public policy pertaining to how the government is being run

b)      Gain maximum knowledge from experts and politicians during my tenure as an intern in the Government of Tonga

c)      Learn hierarchy system of monarchial ruling nation with the new government and the amendments to the Constitution

At the end of the internship, one discovered that the goals were successfully accomplished. There were other educational discoveries that one came across as well. The acquiring of online sources for the Constitution, Acts and some of my interested public policies were extremely important for educational purposes. The maximum exposure to various political agenda settings, policy formulation process with the public enterprises of Tonga, and accessibility to government statistics and files were pretty awesome. Tonga’s hierarchy system and amendments to its Constitution though run down by the Commonwealth’s report, nevertheless Tonga is working with due diligence to make it work. The democratic changes had only been five years and with optimism Tonga will successfully see to this change with due diligence.

I personally think I was very successful with my goal settings because I was able to provide a 55 pages’ comprehensive policy guideline. The most important goal achieving from this internship is being a great ambassador for Arizona State University.