Written by Raelyn Roberson
I am an intern at Made to Save, a Civic Nation initiative that fights to make sure that the COVID-19 vaccines are distributed equitably. This organization recognizes that communities of color do not have equal access to the vaccine due to focused disinformation, lack of healthcare access, as well as lack of general information about COVID-19 and the vaccine. We as an organization partner with trusted messengers and organizations within these communities to help increase vaccine uptake. I am an intern in the training department, a small but mighty team of three not including myself and the other training intern, that facilitates training curriculums for community based organizations across all of the other departments as well as for our partners.
My day to day includes attending meetings with my department as well as the other departments to help plan and provide support for our trainings. I also attend an interns only meeting where I can catch up with the other interns about the work going on in their departments, in addition to sharing ideas for our own individual intern projects. When I am not in these meetings, you can catch me in google docs planning the curriculum for our trainings, in google slides creating the slide deck that will be presented to and shared with our community based organizations, or in google sites keeping our training website updated. I am also in charge of creating quite a bit of the training content for the organization. For my own intern project, I am developing sharable short informational videos in partnership with the Digital department’s intern. In addition to all of this, I am going to put on the training that I created during my previous cycle of this internship for the US Department of Education!
What has been refreshing about this internship is that the values of equity and compassion are not only extended to our partners and community based organizations, but also even to us interns. This internship is fully remote as well as paid, which I have found to be rare in the political space. The staff at this organization also place a large emphasis on professional development, since this organization is only temporary. We are provided with information about other possible careers as well as opportunities to grow in this career path. I also appreciate how this internship offers us opportunities to take charge of and lead our own projects, instead of just doing the grunt work like some of the other internships that I have experienced. I have also been pleasantly surprised that this organization does not just tout equity and diversity just as an aesthetic, but is entirely committed to those values both outside the organization and within. This makes me confident that the work that I am doing is reaching the affected communities in positive and meaningful ways, while also providing an amazing example of how an organization should empower local community organizers instead of overpowering them when trying to enact meaningful change.
This is a screenshot of me presenting my youth oriented training curriculum to the staff in preparation for presenting for the Department of Education.
