Like many other interns and workers this summer, my internship was greatly changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of working on the ground in Gujarat, India with SEWA “bens” (sisters), the two other IMAGO fellows working with SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) and I found ourselves working remotely with the mostly US-based IMAGO team and the India-based SEWA team involved in Project MOVE across 4-5 different time-zones.
Such a variety in time zones made it challenging to book meetings and say the appropriate greeting since it would range from “good morning” for some to “good evening” for others, but also made it possible to have a quicker turnaround on co-created materials since we could pick up and continue working on things after each other. Technological tools were a key enabler of this mode of working together: we made good use of Zoom (surprise) and WhatsApp for communication and creating virtual team-rooms (for problem-solving sessions and to just be able to hear one another type away), Google Drive and Dropbox for storage, and Sharepoint, Google Docs, Google Sheets for live collaboration.
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Another key enabler was our practices: the use of check-ins to check up on how we were doing both work-wise and life-wise (health-wise…), align on priorities, and update one another on meetings and tasks proved essential to staying motivated and productive.
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