My internship with the Communications Team
Thanks to support from players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, Carers Trust is able to run an Internship Programme for young adult carers. The programme aims to offer young adult carers with meaningful work and experience that gets them on the career ladder and helps them develop the skills they can take forward into their working lives. Osei was working with the Communications Team.
This year Carers Trust took the initiative to offer seven young people paid work experience, and fortunately enough, I was one of those seven young people. As a university student and a young carer, I initially thought working as an intern in a professional organisation would be very stressful (meeting endless deadlines) or that I wouldn’t be understood, but it was the opposite. I was warmly welcomed in a great and safe environment, where everyone had my best interest at heart and they made each one of the interns feel part of the organisation.
Carers Trust enabled each one of us to work in departments that attracted our interest, allowing us to maximise our potential and improve ourselves. I had the opportunity to work in the Communications Team, where I learned a lot from my managers and supervisors. For instance, we frequently neglect the effort that precedes press releases, believing that it is merely a stage in the process, but there is a significant amount of work involved.
It was fantastic to work in the Communications team alongside a fantastic team, which allowed me to gain experience as a team member and express my thoughts on a range of materials. The reason I joined the Communications team is that they are an extremely important part of a company; they are in charge of sharing information both within and outside of the organisation, and I wanted to learn more about how the department operates. Working in the communications team allowed me to do something I’d never done before and that became interesting to me: using social media in a work environment.
One of the things that stood out to me about this internship was how well this organisation manages to serve vulnerable people and their carers. And what I will miss most about my time here is the ability to work and learn alongside a fantastic and highly experienced professional team.
Through the internship and the assistance of the excellent staff at Carers Trust, I have learned a lot about myself and how things function in the workplace, preparing me for the real working world. Also through this internship, I have realised that there are many jobs that I could do in the future, regardless of what I am studying at university. I hope and wish that Carers Trust continues to provide opportunities for young carers to gain work experience in such a wonderful organisation that is transforming people's lives.