Naz Melisa Özakman is from Istanbul, Turkey, and has been volunteering at village schools all over Turkey since high school. She holds a bachelor's degree in international relations, and during her undergraduate studies Melisa completed research internships at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück and at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of European Union and Foreign Relations. She also spent an academic year studying in Poland. She has two years of experience as a project assistant for non-governmental organizations with a focus on migration and female entrepreneurs.

It is a pleasure for Melisa to live together with people from different cultures and learn from their experiences. Inspired by her Spanish-speaking friends, she has started learning Spanish and hopes to be fluent by the time she completes her graduate studies.

Summer Internship

I had the opportunity to complete my summer internship with Minga Peru, which is based in Lima. During my internship, I conducted fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon with the indigenous communities. Minga is involved in a wide range of projects, including gender equality and people-centric climate resilience. They promote these topics through tours to the Amazon forest, aiming to increase the income generation of the Indigenous communities while providing training programs for women, young entrepreneurs, and school-age kids. My time in Peru was spent supporting Minga in data collection and reshaping promotional materials for their tours. It was an incredible experience, and I had the opportunity to learn more about community-based development and apply theory to practice in the field.