Introductions and Farewells: Abel Chipepe, Summer Intern 2015

About Abel Chipepe

Summer Intern 2015

Abel Chipepe joined us as a summer intern beginning in August. He is an English teacher, Translator, web designer, programmer and entrepreneur. Abel has been involved with and confounded many local community projects and currently is founding Osiris FCA and Pretécno. He is a student of CIC, a distance learning college from UK, Jersey Island, majoring in Finance and Accounting. He aspires to achieve his MSc. in Computer Sciences and Business Management with Oxford University. He aims to use IT to change lives in African communities as leading innovation has had a significant impact on the continent. This summer he completed a Business and Entrepreneurship Institute program at the University of Notre Dame through the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

Introduction

Over the summer Sonjara had the pleasure of hosting Abel Chipepe, a very bright Angolan student studying abroad in Washington, D.C.  His time with us was brief as his internship ended mid September and he has already returned home. Below is a blog entry he prepared during his time here at Sonjara.
 

My First Day as an Intern at Sonjara

By Abel Chipepe

My name is Abel Carvalho Chipepe, I am from Angola and a Yali program fellow. I participated in a six week Business and Entrepreneurship program at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana. I also applied for a six week internship with a U.S-based company in hopes to implement a similar work ethic and skill set to my projects and business - a professional training business called Angolan Freelancer Academy - back home.

Luckily, I had the chance to intern with Sonjara Inc. in Washington D.C. My first contact was with their website and was drawn to the fact that they use technology for the greater good.

I started on Monday, 16 August, and it couldn’t be better. Not trying to impress them or being bias, but I loved it immediately when I got here. The office is informal, which makes you feel at home already. I met Camille at the door and then Siobhan, co owner and CEO. She was very different from a regular boss in Africa. I wonder if she ever gets mad. She seems so happy and full of life. I participated in meetings and got the chance to meet the rest of the team. Margie, design strategist, Stasha the quality assurance analyst, and Camille. Supercool people. The cofounder, Andrew Green, a computer programmer with extensive experience in several programming languages, is an English by origin. As you might expect, he doesn’t talk too much. I started to learn how to use google Calendar, Skype for remote meeting, and the very impressive Fakoli framework - an entity-based framework designed to simplify development of web applications - a very handy tool for avoiding mistakes that regular developers face. It deploys most of the code you need, and the best of all, it is free. I hope to learn more about it, use it in my projects, and promote it in Angola.

As soon as I got home, I dived into my code feeling that they were all far ahead and I needed to catch up. I started building my website: www.angolanfreelanceracademy.com.

Siobhan, an anthropologist who switched to tech for social causes, is a very good asset to my training and learning process. She understands data and people, things I want to learn and excel at.

I hope to leverage more from their expertise, for they have been involved in many projects. Once I get home, I want to start a free Boot Camp targeting people with disabilities, albinos, women in low income, prostitutes, and teenagers in the slums of Luanda.

All the best in your academic and business endeavors, Abel Chipepe!
-  From your friends and colleagues at Sonjara