So my name is Jonathan Poser I'm a 3rd year do a master's student at the Center for Russian East European integration studies and the Ford school public policy I've been fortunate enough to spend about 3 years of the last 10 studying working and travelling in Eastern Europe and. What started as a kind of general interest in Russian language courses led to a year or a semester studying in Moscow 2 years teaching English in Kiev Ukraine and a season recruiting in Ukraine Moldova for an international educational exchange program it was during this last experience in 2015 when I interviewed a number of Ukrainian teenagers who had been displaced by the conflict in the eastern part of the country as I reflected on that experience. I and the effects of things like systemic corruption conflict and just deep seated social inequity I understood that I wanted to develop the policy skills necessary to assist people in Eastern Europe that to the capacity of that I'm able and leaving leaving some of the the adverse circumstances that they face. So this summer I had an internship at the Trust for social achievement which is a nonprofit in Sofia Bulgaria that services. Minority communities in Bulgaria and tries to integrate them into Bulgarian society specifically they target the Roma the Roma commonly known by the pejorative term gypsies constitute about 5 to 10 percent of the country's population and are on average the poorest people there. The organization works to alleviate some of the most. Significant challenges that they face in areas such as prenatal health care. Infant of care Early Childhood Education Workforce Development and you thought and here is I'm the Roma have been typically marginalized and denied access to many of these areas of society for centuries in many European cities. So using a holistic approach to poverty alleviation and social integration the trust for social achievement partners with international and domestic organizations. In all of these areas so at the trust I had the opportunity to work on a number of different projects but primarily I was tasked with writing a policy brief that is going to be used as an advocacy tool to lobby for the elimination of fees associated with kindergarten attendance basically making early education free for every child in Bulgaria. The core of this report was based on a recently published World Bank impact evaluation of a year long national study conducted by the World Bank and the trust for social achievement in how to most effectively increase participation in early education from the communities. I combined the results of this report which basically said Make it free and kids will attend and mixed in a little bit of information about the long term benefits of early childhood education including Ypsilanti zone Perry Preschool Study and then also made projections about the long term positive impact both socially and economically that early education would have on Bulgarian society so the opportunity was phenomenal for a number of reasons of all of the projects that were proposed would require the direct application of skills like policy writing research sadistical analysis and program management all of which I've been learning here at the ford school and all of which I relied upon during my time there I was also eager to develop my experience working with marginalised populations in the Greater Eastern European region so I came away from this experience with one primary lesson was that change is possible slow and incremental and unsexy as though it may be. Organizations like the trust for social Cheeseman have moved the needle on some really challenging issues it's a very difficult political circumstances I've also learned that poverty is intersectional it's there's no magic bullet there's no panacea a multi-dimensional problem requires a multi-dimensional set of solutions and finally the opportunity to work for the trust which shows that human has renewed my desire to work in international development and now I'm grateful that I have this set of experiences to draw from in the pursuit of that ambition thanks very much thank.