Personal Contributions – Caroline Corry

During my internship at the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative I feel that I have greatly contributed to the furtherance of the goals of this nonprofit. The other interns and I have collaborated on fully updating the information on the Justice Hub. This was a central goal this summer since the information is about a year old and a key component to the legitimacy of this resource is its reliability. It must be able to give practitioners in the criminal justice system quick, easy, and accurate information that aids one connecting clients to services. Another central goal was reaching out to potential users and effectively communicating the reasons for their adoption of the resource. I feel as though I played a key role in achieving both goals by working diligently to get in contact with providers to update their information and in finding and speaking with potential users. Because the nonprofit is so new the other interns and I have played a crucial role in creating legitimacy and sustainability of the resource so that it can be used into the future. I believe that the Justice Hub can do an overwhelming amount of good if it is actually used and we have gotten good feedback from many users so far. The inters have given and passed along additional constructive feedback to make the resource even better based on our experiences with interacting with possible users and providers which will hopefully be included in the future. I have especially learned through this internship how valuable face-to-face contact is with persons is. Many of our meetings that went the best were ones where I was able to be physically with someone. Additionally, I learned how important framing is when making requests. If you portray your ask is a simple and easy expectation people are much more likely to understand and comply to it as such. Overall, I think that I have contributed greatly not only to the goals of the organization but to the criminal justice system in Richmond.