Week #10/Last Week at VOICES

This last week included a lot of wrap up material and final presentations to Stephanie, Mary, and Leanne, who were my three main supervisors. This included sending in a 3 minute long clip that will be give to Mary and Frank as a thank you for their work over the past years and to help them honor the 20th anniversary of September 11th. We also went around the different surrounding towns including New Canaan, Darian, Rowayton, and Westport to hang up poster for their art gallery and cocktail party that honors the victims, family members, responders, and survivors of 9/11. This was it get the local community more involved with the Voices Center for Resilience and to spread the word about these events and the organization itself. We also wrapped up our research projects that we have worked on over the past 10 weeks and presented them to the organization. Our findings will be used in webinars and published on their website for events and information after the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Since Voices Center of Resilience, previously Voices of September 11th, rebranded this past year, it was important for Mary, the founder, to have events that occurred after September and create a bigger and more whole focus on mental health and other world tragedies that have been recently occurring, as well as the 9/11 events.

In addition, over my past 10 weeks interning here I feel as if I have experienced transformational leadership, not only from Mary, the founder, but from the organization as a whole. Transformational leadership is when leadership causes change in individuals and social systems, as it create valuable change within the followers and community, increased overall motivation, and followers sense of identity. This leader is often times looked at in a role model type of way. I think this perfectly describes my experience working for  Voices and the impact they have on all of their followers and community. Mary, the founder, was a social worker before September 11th and after the event happened, she opened her home and heart to the entire community, as a whole, and stopped her old job to create this foundation. Mary continued her fight for many different aspects of 9/11, whether that was performing testimony in front of the 9/11 commission, fighting with many city official in order to create the 9/11 memorial and museum that would best memorialize the victims and many other situations that makes her followers and community want to become more involved in her cause. Voices has helped many people transform their mental health for the better after experiencing a tragedy and continues to expand their outreach, not only across the country, but around the world. This organization has certainly made me more motivated to help those around me and continue to learn and promote mental health. The connections the organization has made as a whole and creating smaller communities for others to support and help each other also shows a sense of transformational leadership as well. This organization embodies the idea of transformational leadership, as it has created significant positive change in the life of the people involved in this organization and has changed many perceptions and values about 9/11 and mental health.