Charith Norvelle's Story

Summer 2008 internship with Food for the Hungry

Current status at George Fox University

2008 graduate. BA in Organizational Communications.

Goal
Gain a better understanding the non profit field both stateside and overseas on the field. To network with practitioners and gain the experience to better equip future career choices working in and with and non profit organizations.

Why I desired an internship
Internships provide a great transition time from college to real world work. I wanted to intern with a non profit organization to get my foot in the door of the non profit world and start making connections while investigating what part of non profit work most interests me. A lot of internship programs leave considerable time for interns to just explore the organization and how their passions might be incorporated in the work of the organization or organizations like theirs.

Why this particular industry
After spending a semester abroad in East Africa with Food for the Hungry I became very intrigued by the work of non profit organizations. I had never worked with a non profit, and new very little about what working for one would consist of. An internship seemed like the best opportunity to gain experience while testing the waters of the field. I chose Food for the Hungry because I was familiar with some of the programs that I was exposed to in East Africa.

What I've learned
I have learned a ton about non profit work! I ended up on a conference coordination team which put in to practice all of my schooling on marketing, networking, promotions, and event planning. Its been an incredible 2 month crash course.

Resulting from this internship
Food for the Hungry has become a family to me. The office is full of innovative and entrepreneurial minded people. It's a culture that has been great to be plugged into, constantly dreaming up new programs or better ways of doing what we are already doing. The connections I made at Food for the Hungry turned into employment opportunities and I am now on a short term hire with the organization doing marketing research and strategies for the Go ED. program (which is the semester abroad program I attended in 2007).