Internship Experiences

UMass Sociology student Rosalie Miller is currently interning with Border Angels in San Diego. The following is a description of what she has been up to.

This week with Border Angels has been more office based. We are trying to get in the swing of things to be applying for grants, so I was finally able to get Enrique to sit down with me so I could throw questions his way and gather information needed to start the application processes. Its pretty complex and I’m definitely gaining an intimate look inside the workings of Border Angels, which is serving me as an illustration of effective and non-effective ways to run a non-profit organization.
On Sunday I had a good time attending a service at a local UU church, which is starting a 6 week series on immigration as a moral issue, and so they asked Border Angels to come as guests. The service was really nice and it was interesting to see  the ways in which they were choosing to tackle the issues of immigration within their congregation.
Last night we attended a great fundraiser for the organization, put together by one of our staff members who attends UCSD. In case you’re wondering just how many staff members there are, the answer is 4, including myself- one of whom is part time and the other of which is part-part time. This means that with myself not around, Enrique is the only person who has the space to be focusing on BA most of the time, and he is constantly running around going to meetings, functions, etc- only some of which that act to further the cause of Border Angels. Translation: its hard to make things happen in a big way for Border Angels, and for many other community based and non-profit organizations in similar situations. The fundraiser was a great success though! There were great bands, and the headliners were terrific, and we got a lot of support and interest from the students who attended. We also raised $550!  On Sunday we will be tabling the Lila Downs concert in Balboa park, which should be a lot of fun, and we will probably be able to go backstage and meet with Lila and her band. We have been selling tickets at a discounted rate as a fundraiser, so I’ve been meeting with a lot of people and trying to do a lot of advertising. Lots of the time I feel like I don’t have that much to do but somehow I manage to stay pretty busy!

till next time,
rose

To read more about Rosalie’s internship, see previous posts here.