This is more a summary than a blog; just to give an idea of what I got up to in my 12 week internship at Anglia Care Trust and how and why I got involved.
I was living in Beijing when I saw the position advertised on the UEA website, I had completed a great year in South Korea teaching English and moved over to China to look for another teaching role; despite the teaching going well I felt I had to get back to the UK and find a way to gain more useful skills that would help improve my chances making a career in the Environmental Sector; there are only so many skills you can gain from teaching kids English. I decided 16 months away from home was enough, I was starting to miss home and craving things like roast dinner; I decided to apply for the role.
Shortly after arriving home I was contacted by UEA to say ACT wanted to interview me. The interview went well and I decided it would be great to gain an insight into the Charity Sector; I was interested at the time in working for an NGO abroad e.g. C3 which is a community centred conservation charity. Despite ACT not being an environmental charity, I believed I could gain relevant skills such as developing sustainable services, research and bid writing.
During the first week, I realised I had a lot to learn; it was necessary to understand all the services the charity provides, there are three key services with multiple departments such as family intervention programmes, housing for ex offenders, money advice and mentoring. Once I learnt all about them I could start the real purpose of my role which was organisational development.
Throughout the 12 weeks I worked with the managers to help develop their services. The biggest priority was securing funding for a housing scheme for vulnerable adults which had fallen short on targets to become a self funding project. There were many set backs in the process of creating an application and I began to realise how time consuming putting together a funding application can be, I also realised just how important it is for managers to plan projects in detail, especially financially; I learnt quite a lot from other peoples mistakes as well as my own. At the same time I was also researching other funding bodies and matching the most appropriate fund to each project for example I came up with the Adnams Charity who were interested in youth and community support and I chose to apply to them to secure funding for a new mentoring project for disadvantaged young people. Most recently I was working on putting together a webpage for local giving which will allow people to make donations online to ACT.
About half way through the internship I was given the opportunity to play football for ACT in the annual Soccer Sixes Tournament at Ipswich Town Football Club. Teams who finished in the bottom half of the group went on to play in the ‘UEFA Cup’ while teams who were in the top half went on to play in the ‘Champions League’ unfortunately due to poor performance in the first few games we ended up going into the ‘UEFA Cup’ however we came on leaps and bounds and ended up winning our last 5 games, it all came down to a tense final game, ACT needed to win, the opposition only needed a draw. We scored and then defended tirelessly to guarantee the win and take the UEFA trophy! It was great to play at
Portman Road
; my local football club.
In addition to the research and applications I was asked to be part of the committee for the annual summer events staff day. I attended meetings and together we came up with ideas for an Olympic style staff event day. I took on the responsibility of planning and running a treasure hunt, I was also a team leader for 1 of the 6 teams. Staff had to compete in teams to get the most points from various activities including; an opening ceremony where they had to sing the national anthem of their appointed nation, a quiz and a treasure hunt.
Since completing the internship I have been taken on for another 3 months, despite the role not being exactly what I want to do I am still gaining new skills and being involved with new projects, It feels good that I am having a big part to play in the future development of Anglia Care Trust, I also have more time now to apply for permanent positions in other organisations. The implications of my work will not be fully realised until probably another 2 or 3 months so I am intrigued to see how much funding will be secured through my efforts.
I would like to thank UEA and ACT for this great opportunity and the experiences and learning I have gained.
