Internship Location: Madison WI
Organization Type: International NGO
Policy Areas: Human Rights/Social Welfare
I interned at the National Association of Social Workers – Wisconsin. The interns, in collaboration with the Executive Director and Office manager, are the backbone of this chapter organization. I was responsible for a number of different tasks, ranging from member engagement to policy research. Each month, the interns would present bills to a committee that decided whether to support such bills or not. In preparation for these meetings, it was my responsibility to research important features of each bill, present a summary, and find additional information to predict questions from the committee. This piece of my internship was where I gained the most knowledge and experience. I grew in my ability to research important information strategically, present information succintly, and push myself towards excellence. Because this internship comprises of mostly independent work, it became important that I seek out additional projects and look for opportunities from my executive director. Random projects would be presented at weekly staff meetings that would touch on a specific intern’s skills or allow an intern to learn a new skill. Examples of projects are compiling statistics of member demography from the past two years, creating a new marketing strategy, or reading relevant articles and writing a summary. I learned to promote myself when opportunities came up that harped on skills that I already possessed, and to speak up when I felt a project could be a good challenge for me. This is an internship that will push you to grow and learn new things if you allow it to and if you put in effort!