Literacy Pirates and the LiA project

In this year’s Leadership in Action project, I work as a project manager at the Literacy Pirates. It is a local charity that helps children who are left behind in class to catch up and overcome the challenges in reading and writing. This is a 6-week project, where I have to work closely with all my colleagues, especially the creative and digital division, to help the children develop their literacy, confidence and perseverance. Before the project started, I decided to learn how a charity is organized and worked as much as possible.

Objectives and outcomes

During the first 3 weeks of the project, I worked as a volunteer in the after-school sessions. As a non-native English speaker myself, my first task was to make friends with students. I always started with a self-introduction and questions about their day at school. During the session, I encouraged children to share their ideas and opinions with me and responded with commendations and suggestions. By the end of the sessions, I had made deep friendships with many young children. We learnt readings and writings together, exchanged ideas about many issues, and introduced our homelands to each other. This was such a great experience.

At the same time, I worked with the creative project coordinator to organize the final graduation event. It was a two-day event with 250 guests that would be held in the fourth week of my internship. I was responsible for providing logistics support such as monitoring timelines and sorting out all the necessary documents and props. I gained hands-on experience in organizing events and managing unexpected issues by working closely with all the session leaders and educational team assistants.  By observing what my manager has done in the whole process, I learnt that leadership is a combination of visionary goals and detailed planning.  A successful leader should have the ability to assign people the task that they are capable of and suitable to do.  While monitoring the key details, the leader should allow the team members to play their role fully to uplift the whole team.  In the end, all the young pirates were very happy to be involved in the graduation event and see themselves on the screen.

My experience

I worked with the communications manager and other colleagues to monitor and analyze social media data. After summarizing the information from the volunteer application forms and other charitable organizations, I created an advertisement poster and a document of the key information that the organization should emphasize when advertising. This helped Literacy Pirates to advertise more effectively by targeting the volunteers' needs and preferences, and distinguishing Literacy Pirates from similar organizations to make it more appealing.

At the same time, I supported the digital team by analyzing and summarizing the use of AI (Microsoft Copilot) in improving the efficiency of the whole organization. Through a 3-week research, I gave a presentation to my manager where all the steps and functions were visualized, and a document that has all the content in detail. By utilizing AI tools in daily work, Literacy Pirates could reduce administrative workload, especially when sending school letters and updating Salesforce. This allows them to cut unnecessary repetitive work and spend more time on creative and interactive projects.

Challenges and lessons

The SMART goals for the LiA project created by my manager and I together were very helpful in terms of allowing me to get to know how charities work in real life and how to make sure that tasks go well. The most important thing I learnt during the project is not to be afraid of having questions and be confident to ask them. When I was asked to create the slides for the presentation, I misused the materials so I had to change them till the last minute. By reflecting on this issue and discussing how to improve my work with the manager, I realized that asking questions when you meet something that you are unfamiliar with or don’t know what to do, is the most efficient way to tackle the problem.

The feedback on my work from all my colleagues was quite positive. After self-reflecting on the mistake I made, for all the tasks assigned to me, I would ask the manager to clarify anything unclear to me to make sure that I was on the right track at the beginning. During the following work, I constantly update my progress with the manager and other colleagues to improve my work based on their feedback. I always schedule a check-in with the supervisors before the final presentation time to see if what I have done was just what they were looking for.

Reflection

The effectiveness of this placement in terms of allowing people to become a better self and have more ideas about LiA varies. Some (like me) may find it quite interesting because it is a good chance to build social and cultural intelligence and awareness by working with people from all walks of life. Moreover, the work at Literacy Pirates allowed me to explore different departments and roles within a charity. The flexibility of the project plan also ensures that I can give full play to my creativity and initiative. However, there was much administrative work that would be given to interns. Besides, the project manager would be better involved if they love working with children.