I believe that I have gained a lot from the internship I have completed over this past semester with the homelessness aid charity ‘Caridad’. I have learned and developed a number of different skills that will benefit me in whatever career I follow, even if it is not necessarily connected to the field of nonprofit/charity work.
As a double major, majoring in economics and anthropology, this internship only somewhat connected to my fields of study. Part of the work they had me do involved helping with financial reports and grant applications which connected a bit to the economics side, and as for anthropology I needed to learn about the situation of different ‘clients’ on a deeper level to be able to better understand whatever they were struggling with and to get them the help that they needed.
I do not think there are many prior educational requirements someone would need for this internship. The possible ways an intern can help out with ‘Caridad’ are varied and a lot of the process can be, if not will need to be, taught while on the job. Maybe starting off with some lessons on the relationship between homelessness aid organizations and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) may be useful, but not really necessary.
This sort of nonprofit social work is a field that is interesting, important, and which I have a lot of respect for but even from the beginning I was pretty sure I was not interested in pursuing it as my ultimate career field. I am interested in a career in academics more than anything, however this experience has informed my interests in that I would like to take a more academic lens to this kind of work and study the sorts of obstacles organizations like this face in a more systematic manner.
I don't really know what kind of training one would need for a career in this field since every day seems to bring a new problem, concern, or issue which you need to tackle on a case by case basis. So the only real ‘skill’ someone needs, at least from what I’ve seen, is the ability to operate well under pressure.
One piece of advice to future interns is to be prepared for things to feel very hectic for much of your time there but don’t let the stress make you lose sight of the fact that you are helping people in need and how that’s pretty amazing.
