„Selbst in einer NGO Teil eines Weges nach vorne sein“
Regina Pichler über ihre Mitarbeit bei „NPH Österreich – Hilfe für Waisenkinder“
What motivated me to write this report? Well, I read the call and immediately knew: I have to participate here! Simply because it was such an important experience for me that I really want to share. The idea is to motivate other people to apply to organizations other than the well-known ones. And that's how I did it:
From September 2011 to June 2012, I completed an internship at the international children's charity "NPH Austria - Help for Orphans" for 15 hours per week. The minimum internship duration is three months, which is also useful to get a good insight into the activities of the organization.
As an organization that is not very present in the public eye, I came across NPH by chance. What particularly attracted me to the internship was the fact that NPH specializes in the Latin American region and runs numerous children's villages and outreach projects there.
I see the big advantage of an internship at NPH in the fact that the size of the office in Vienna gives you the opportunity to get to know all areas of the daily workflow. I took on very versatile activities and was also involved from all sides. I was mainly involved in supporting PR and fundraising, but I was also involved in volunteer coordination. I was often given the task of project-related research, where you can always immerse yourself in new areas and learn something new.
I also found it particularly exciting to work in the social media area, which after all is an extremely interesting communication and networking medium for NGOs. Finally, I even became a member of the internal Green Team, which was founded as part of the EcoBusinessPlan, which added another new internship area and allowed me to gain knowledge in environmental issues. As you can see, the fields of work are very diverse and there are many areas you can get a taste of during your internship.
After three months, I extended the internship because I wanted to gain more experience. What really impressed me personally was the commitment of every single employee. We were happy about positive news together, and when there was negative news, we racked our brains together about how to turn the situation around. And it was precisely this kind of thinking that led me to share my experiences with this internship report: What can be changed so that things always move forward? What direction to steer, what tools to use? How can you achieve a lot with few resources? It was precisely this opportunity to actively participate in thinking about and witnessing how an organization is constantly developing that motivated me so much. That you yourself can be part of the way forward and achieve something with your activity and active commitment: To advance the organization and its work.
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