My Leadership in Action project was one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve ever taken up. I was working with Literacy Pirates, a non-profit focused on teaching literacy to students in North London. We mainly targeted students most at risk at falling behind, but had not yet fallen back enough for them to be eligible for extra help within the formal education framework. This group of students we called ‘silent underachievers’ and they often slipped through the cracks of most schools, falling behind class but not far enough for provisions in their learning.

We had a long list of stakeholders to keep in mind while achieving our goals, ranging from the staff, the funders, the students, the parents, and the schools. However, my team were experts in navigating that difficult terrain. The team also made my time at the non-profit extremely enjoyable.

The three things I enjoyed the most during my internship was the teaching, the people, and the sense of purpose within the charity. I did not expect that teaching would have been such an enjoyable experience, especially since I did not have experience working with children in that age bracket. Hence, I was a bit apprehensive at the start, however my expectations were shattered when I started. I found that interactions with kids were incredibly fulfilling. Additionally, I had a day where I was quite upset over personal matter, however the moment I arrived at the office and started teaching, the energy of the kids completely changed my mood, and my day brightened up. The people that I worked with also formed a massive part of my enjoyment. My coworkers were incredibly fun and caring, while the volunteers who worked with me added so much into my life and broadened my perspective. Lastly, the sense of purpose that each person brought into the charity was infectious, and I felt that sense quite strongly in everything I did at work. It inspired me to bring that sense into all my work that I do.

I felt like my existence in the organization left a large impact in the short term, as well as the long term. My non-profit works extensively with its local communities in North London, and the neighbourhoods we worked in, especially Dalston and Tottenham had a large Turkish population. For example out of also the English as a second language kids we had, 2/3 were Turkish speakers. Hence, the work that I did in the non-profit took a very personal aspect for me, as I felt that I was servicing my very own community. In the short term, we saw more engagement with the Turkish kids in the classes, as there was someone from their own community instructing them and being a role model. Additionally the projects in translation and outreach that I completed in the organization made it easier to reach out to Turkish speaking families. Hence, I like to think that my work left a positive impact, short and long, both within the organization I worked in, but also my community in North London.

I also saw myself change quite a lot during my six weeks. One of my largest points of growth was self-efficacy. Coming into the internship, I felt quite inept with everything I did, not because I actually did not know how to operate a printer or my way around Microsoft Teams, it was simply that I had not found myself in a teaching or office environment before. My superiors quickly realized this, and I got comments that I was actually doing quite well, and that I simply had to believe my capabilities. These comments helped quite a lot, and by the end of my six weeks I was getting comments that the team had seen improvements!

Overall for me, this Leadership in Action was an extremely fruitful and transformative experience. I was both professionally and personally challenged, and if anything this experience has made me look forward to many more projects to come.