Stella’s Summer Internship Experience
Hi, my name is Stella and I attend McDaniel High School. For 6 weeks, I was an intern at Passion Impact – a non-profit organization that focuses on students finding their passion, helping the community, and bringing awareness to important social justice issues. This year, we did this by creating a Volunteer Event Program (VEP) and an event to go with it. The event was a school supply drive. As the new school year got closer and closer, the McDaniel interns and I decided to create an event catered around that. We knew that students were going back to school in a financially unstable environment, so that’s where we got the school drive idea.
Before we confirmed the McDaniel High School Supply Drive to be our event, we had to brainstorm other events. We thought of picking up trash at a park or giving food to the homeless, but nothing seemed as personal as supporting our friends and neighbors who can’t afford the things we can. So, next we decided how the actual happening would proceed. What the day would look like.
The interns and I concluded that, first, we would fundraise for school supplies and materials. Then, we would set up a place and time for the event. Lastly, we would give away the supplies at our high school, McDaniel. Before this internship, the McDaniel interns and I knew planning this event would take a lot of work and time with discussing its details and making sure everything will go well. But throughout it all, we also kept in the back of our minds that it will definitely be worth it to help our community. Additionally, this event would give us the experience and skills we lacked – like, how to fundraise, how to contact other organizations, how to use a spreadsheet, how to advertise using different techniques and different methods, and more.
Planning the volunteer event was my favorite part of the internship because of how productive it felt, and was, and how it made me get out of my comfort zone.
My second favorite part of this internship was attending the workshops. This is because of how much I learnt from them. For example, I learned how to write a resume and what the need of a cover letter is during the Resume and Cover Letter workshop. Or, during the Personal Mission Statement workshop, I learned what a personal mission statement is and how to create one. It can be written, drawn, molded, or something completely different. These workshops taught me things I should know and new ideas I was not aware of but wouldn’t have looked for myself. I’m so glad they were presented.
All in all, Passion Impact has been an amazing experience for me and I’m delighted I applied. It was fun meeting others with similar interests as I and getting out of my comfort zone. Planning a volunteer event to help others was more exciting and rewarding than I could imagine and learning new skills through the workshops I participated in have already helped in the real world. I’ve made some great friends throughout this internship and will definitely continue working with Passion Impact. Have a great day!