My six-week internship at Blackfriars Settlement was an unexpected opportunity, a chance for me to learn more about the different people in London, while experiencing the complex operations of a modern charity. It started with a short interview, where I was briefed on the different challenges and budgetary constraints that BFS was facing. My main role was to develop income generation strategies, particularly through corporate partnerships and venue hire services. I was extremely excited to help out and serve the community of Southwark through a more entrepreneurial and fundraising lens.

Immediately, I began seeing London in a different light; the people that walked into BFS were from all sorts of backgrounds. I spoke to someone from Balochistan, a few from Kurdistan and Nigeria. The members that I met during cooking sessions and choir rehearsals also ranged from elderly residents participating in positive ageing programmes to vulnerable individuals accessing mental health services, all drawn by the activities hosted by BFS and accessible community spaces. I also helped in the back-end with the discovery of potential corporate partners looking for social responsibility partnerships. 

One of my favourite events was the nightingale choir rehearsals, which were positive ageing activities that allowed members of the community to interact meaningfully with one another. Led by Michael who played the guitar, I joined in as well, accompanied with some of my own piano playing. These sessions showed me how these spaces were key for the intersection and dialogue between different kinds of people.

However, most of my time day-to-day was spent developing and supporting the charity’s income development. My job focused on creating corporate partnership packages and redesigning the organisation's digital presence to attract commercial clients. Through developing pitch decks and conducting competitive analysis of similar venues across London, I created the key resources for Andrea to then translate into relationships with potential corporate fundraisers streamlining the room hire process to generate consistent revenue streams. This included launching a fully redesigned corporate partnership webpage, and creating marketing materials. I think through these tasks, my perspective of leadership also changed, where I realised the importance of adaptive communication. Initially, I approached challenges with enthusiasm but without sufficient understanding of the stakeholders involved. Working closely with the director of community services taught me that effective leadership requires a strong attention to human relationships, and genuine appreciation for the reasons why people may choose to volunteer or help the charity. For instance, I spoke with Eva about changing the room-hire system, before discovering that there were certain practical manpower considerations for the existing system, 

As the project came to a close, I contributed to the final successful launch of the redesigned corporate partnership webpage and the streamlined venue hire process. The competitive analysis on various site hiring websites I conducted informed pricing strategies and service offerings that better positioned Blackfriars Settlement within London's event venue market. I developed technical skills in web development using Elementor, and became more knowledgeable in html and web development. I remember one of the key moments was when Andrea managed to secure a meeting with one of the large corporate donors to trial the corporate package that I had spent time developing.

In conclusion, I think this internship reinforced my appreciation for the vital role community organisations play in maintaining social cohesion, with poignant events like Covid-19 that worsened issues of isolation and mental health. The personal touch and the stories that I heard about how Blackfriars Settlement had transformed individual lives moved me and I realised I will probably continue helping out with charity work. Lastly, this experience taught me how an effective charity demands both strategic business skills and genuine commitment to community connection. This internship experience will undoubtedly guide my approach to future challenges, focusing on both relationships and practical skills.

Update:

I would like to just share a few notes also on how I set my SMART goals and how they influenced my Laidlaw LIA journey. To kick things off, I picked up a lot of skills that I didn't quite expect to learn, for instance html and using elementor for web design. These were outside the scope of my SMART goals but really valuable as they provided me with the foundations to explore coding and computer science in my free time, sparking this as a newfound hobby. However, I knew that I would be meeting a lot of interesting people, going outside of my comfort zone and social circle -- which mostly was people around my age in LSE. A smart goal that I set and I think the one I'm proudest of, was to improve my empathy and meet more people. I participated actively in charity events, and overcame the hesitancy that I used to have when meeting new people. I realised it was about asking the right questions and sharing more about yourself -- being a little vulnerable. I'm writing this a few months after so I definitely stayed in touch with some people from Blackfriars, and am glad that a few of these goals have helped me form new friendships.

Here's the rest of my SMART goals! Feel free to message me about any of them - note, web development clearly did not end up there:

Adding on, I would also like to share how working with Blackfriars has kickstarted my coding and building journey, where currently I've worked on several projects using Python, HTML and React.js. At Blackfriars, I worked on developing the full page that would facilitate corporate donations and corporate engagement: from volunteering programmes, to donations and partnerships. This project was more or less from scratch, and it was one where I learnt a lot on the job. I realised that coding and building was more about communicating and receiving feedback, than the actual technical skills. My supervisor for instance would give me some pointers on how to improve the page, and I think that a constant stream of effective and constructive feedback enables a project to go from good to great. I used tools like mermaid.io to map out what would be the 'clicks' for a user to navigate the page, and worked backwards, identifying key call to actions that the charity would want. Mapping all this out made it clear that certain parts of the website needed 'renovations'. This culminated in designing over 5 pages, which included the Partner with Us Page, Corporate Volunteering, Donations Site, and Support a Project Site, which has since enabled any interested businesses or corporate volunteers to easily see how they can support Blackfriars Settlement.