These past few months, I have interned at HAVEN to fulfill a major requirement for my undergraduate degree at the University of New Hampshire. Initially, I chose to intern at HAVEN because of how I agreed with their mission statement and because I found the office location convenient to drive to. Throughout my time here I became more and more glad that I chose to intern here specifically, as opposed to other internship placement locations.
When applying for an internship at HAVEN, I was faced with the choice to work in a specific area of the organization: Client Services, Shelter and Housing, Education and Prevention, and Development and Outreach. Since I thought it would be best suited to my interests, I chose the Development and Outreach department. Initially, I wasn’t sure what my responsibilities as an intern would entail, but I ended up getting to do a lot of interesting and useful things.
My favorite thing that I got to do as a Development and Outreach intern was learning to search for potential sponsors that might be open to sponsoring HAVEN, since they are already involved with other nonprofits. I learned important skills such as how to navigate information databases, how to identify the best way to establish a line of communication for a potential donor, and most importantly how to triple-check my work and take my time when searching through and updating information databases like Little Green Light.
Another thing I really enjoyed doing during my time at HAVEN was tabling at locations willing to spread the word about HAVEN’s services. During my short time here, I was able to accompany my supervisors to three outreach events which aligned with my schedule. It was very interesting to see the difference in engagement levels throughout the different communities I visited (two colleges and one high school). I think tabling at these different places was an important experience for me because I was able to observe and contribute to interactions people were having with our HAVEN table. In addition, it was interesting to see how many people were familiar with the concepts a lot of the HAVEN materials cover (such as sexual assault and domestic violence).
A third example of something I’ve really enjoyed doing during my time interning here is writing blog posts. I enjoy writing in general and it was a very fun opportunity to be able to contribute to HAVEN’s blog page. My supervisors helped me select relevant and important topics to cover for my blog post content, and I pretty much had creative liberty from there. It was a very good opportunity to learn how to hone my researching skills in a more efficient way to provide supplementary material to the blog posts. I also found it a beneficial task for me to complete because it helped me to learn how to better respond to feedback and be concise with my writing.
Overall, I have had a really great time interning with the Outreach and Development team at HAVEN and I am glad that I ended up picking HAVEN for my internship placement (and that they let me intern here!). Every person I have interacted with here has been so kind and friendly, and I have always felt comfortable communicating with my supervisors about my assignments and tasks. If you find yourself agreeing with the mission statement of this nonprofit or another nonprofit in your area, I highly recommend pursuing an internship or volunteer position there. Internships and volunteering doesn’t feel like ‘work’ if you feel that what you are doing is impactful and aligns with the values you have.
