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My experience Interning At Bradford District and Craven Mind
Hello! My name is Ife.
For the last six weeks I’ve been working alongside Bradford District and Craven Mind’s business development team to support content creation and gain work experience before my final year of university.
I was asked to write something to share my experience working for the mental health charity, so without further ado… here it goes.
Week one
My first day was working from home, I remember starting that morning sat at my cluttered desk and wondering, ‘what on earth am I going to do?’. By ten o’clock Hayley, MiB’s Marketing manager, and I had a call where she introduced me to the systems and helped me set my accounts up. She then showed me a list of small tasks I could get on with to better understand the company and what was expected for me so I had a smooth transition into their world of marketing.
When I got the office the next day, I had to embarrassingly enter and re-enter the code since I couldn’t figure out which way the door opened. It wasn’t until my third week that a noticed the big camera hanging over the keypad meaning anyone sat behind reception at the time would have definitely seen me in all my glory. For future interns- It’s a push.
I was shown around the office, given more codes and introduced to everyone, terrified I wouldn’t be able to remember it all, before meeting my mentors Hayley and Hollie, the backbone of marketing and comms for MiB. They quickly made me feel settled and issued me my first task, a Windrush day post for social media due the next afternoon.
As a HR student who’s never had to do serious design work, I was nervous but set out to try my best. Once it was completed and posted to socials, I was proud of myself and my mentors’ positive words of encouragement made me excited to do it again but with more confidence in my abilities this time.
Week two
On my second week I was given a blog from a client to type up and edit. I remember working on it for hours, unsure that I even knew what I was doing, fortunately, Hollie helped me throughout the entire process. She showed me how to design the webpage in the MiB style and briefed me on how to make a social post to promote the blog too. Click here to give it a read!
On the same day, I was very easily talked into the recording of a promotional video for the new crisis support service ‘Safe Spaces’. This is how my face made a debut on MiB’s socials as the (unconvincing) character of ‘girl in crisis’, which also lead to me being recognised a few weeks later at a Cellar Trust event.
Week three
By now, I had a better idea of what I was doing. I was given another blog and matching social post task but this time it I had to do the research for it too. I considered this my best piece of work in the duration of my internship (up until writing this blog) and the ability to say it was my project, from start to finish, made me again feel very proud of myself and happy that I had been trusted with so much after two and bit weeks.
The rest of the week consisted of internal design tasks such as creating a print version of the staff newsletter ‘Ey Up’, designing new signage for the office (which included me using a guillotine and a laminator which was more fun than it should have been) and a couple of social posts; one to celebrate Eid and the other to inform clients of an upcoming open day at a Cliffhollins riding school.
The week ended with a trip I was responsible for arranging to Bradford Cathedral, where we were asked to do a pop-up stall for Bolivian dancer Yuvel Soria’s AJAYU Transitorio event. I got a MiB t-shirt, resisted the urge to take all the free pens, was fed a deceptively spicy taco and learned something new about the traditional day of the dead in Bolivia.
Week four
Week four was my favourite for reasons I’m not even quite sure of. I was issued with an impact report to design and while I was excited to do a big design task again, it dawned on me I had no idea what an impact report was even supposed to look like. It was here that Hayley helped me the most, giving me feedback and a past impact report to use as a reference, never making me feel silly for being a bit out of my depth and reassuring me I was doing a good job the whole time. The report is yet to be released but when it is, remember the intern who helped design it! (Please, it was hard.)
Later that week I was surprised with a big cardboard box at my desk, with pieces of what would be an easel inside. I was left to my own devices and searched the store room for a toolbox (which took longer than I’m willing to admit) before happily assembling the easel with only four screws left in the box when I thought I had finished. I did manage to find where the screw’s belonged and ended the day in Shipley at Cellar Trust’s summer social where I saw children learn how to do CPR and, judging by their enthusiasm, assured myself that the future of healthcare would be safe in their tiny hands.
Week five
(Go on, tap the squares)
The majority of my time during week five, was spent doing prep work for content to be released in my final week (including this blog, which I hope your enjoying by the way) but, due to the heatwave that stunned the nation, I ended up creating a post advising people on how to stay safe in the sun and also made a post-able version of an existing blog to announce the beginning of South Asian Heritage Month.
I also did a social post, to be made public during the weekend that, would hopefully spark interest for a potential fundraising event later in the year. I’m definitely too proud of the pun which is the main (sole) reason the post is getting a mention in this blog.
Week six
As I’m writing this, week six is yet to start. However, my released projects by the time this is out will be a blog I wrote, and its matching social post, on mental health within the construction industry which involved me having to interview someone! It went well and it was a really nice feeling to be working on the blog, formatting its layout for the website and creating it’s promotional post with so much confidence that I was capable of doing it all to a good standard thanks to all the experience I had gathered in the weeks prior.
In some ways, writing this blog and the construction blog for my last week felt like the final boss after a series of mini challenges!
Overall
I really enjoyed my time at MiB, it was a great way to gain experience without the stress of a high pressure environment as my mentors were extremely welcoming, at no point making me feel like I was too afraid to ask a question. It gave me an opportunity to look into how businesses really function with a better insight into the charity sector that I will definitely be able to apply into my final year of university. I’d encourage everyone in my position to go out and try to get some sort of work experience while you have all these wonderful people around to support you as it can only do good in the grand scheme of things.
Thank you to MiB but, more specifically, to Hayley and Hollie for being so patient and lovely and giving me a chance to prove to myself that I can do more than I thought.
And thank you for reading!
Posted on: 29th July 2022
