Successful first week at a nonprofit

After the first week of immersing myself in the role of a communications intern for a nonprofit organization called Voices of September 11th in downtown New Canaan, Connecticut, I am confident that it will be a valuable experience from which I will take many important lessons. I feel that I have made a positive personal contribution to the organization, even just in the first few days on the job. I have already been given several significant tasks which have kept me very busy every day. I am pleased to have landed an internship in which I am involved in the accomplishment of meaningful work.

On my first and second days on the job, all of the interns went through orientation and training with the other staff members, where we were familiarized with how the company operates and what we will be doing throughout the summer.  We were also given individual tasks as well as a group project for all of the interns to work on together. I was personally in charge of creating a 2020 social media calendar for the organization. This task involved the transferring of events from the 2019 calendar and also performing research on any new and noteworthy events to add to the new one. Given the nature of the organization, a lot of my research revolved around acts of terror around the world, and any relevant awareness days, such as World Safety Day, among others, which I discovered in my research and subsequently added to the calendar. I also wrote out small reports on the organization’s milestones from 2017 and 2018, which will later be added to the organization’s website. This involved researching the organization’s updates and events from both of these years and compiling this information into a succinct and eloquent account.  I also went through the Voices of September 11thwebsite and looked for any defunct links and proofread articles which are soon going to be uploaded.

The third and fourth days were occupied by our first group project, which is still in progress. All of the interns are in charge of performing research on 9/11 responders who have died in recent years due to various illnesses resulting from toxins present at the event.  We then input biographical data into an Excel spreadsheet and also into the organization’s office management system, FileMaker. The goal is to eventually create an archive on the website for all of this information. Evidently, it is a heavy task, but it is certainly an important one for the progression of the organization’s objectives. For this reason, I am glad to be taking on such a significant role within the company.

One thought on “Successful first week at a nonprofit

  • I think it is absolutely fabulous that you can write a personal contributions reflection the very first week of your internship; that clearly signals that the interns – and specifically you – at your site have been given meaningful and significant work/projects. Sounds like you accomplished a great deal your first week. As you continue, I encourage you to think about whether your studies provide you with particular insights that are useful for the nature of work you are doing, to the organization as a whole, etc.

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