My name is Grace, and I am 19, born and raised in York. I am autistic and receive support from Blueberry Academy, a local education provider. I have been doing a Supported Internship at Family Fund/FFBS for the past year. Throughout the year I have moved between three different departments. Operations, Business Development and Communications & Marketing (FFBS and charity side).
To put it simply, I’ve greatly enjoyed my time here and it has been wonderful being able to go through three different departments each term. Each department (Operations, Business Development and Communications & Marketing) has had things that I’ve enjoyed, and being able to finally figure out what I would like to pursue has been a great experience and exactly what I wanted out of this internship.
To start, operations was a great introduction into the workplace. I was able to get in and do the work without much hiccup, but through my first term working, I have been able to get more and more confident talking to people. Being able to ask for clarification on things or questions has been a great way of getting me more comfortable working in an office environment.
My second term was working with Business Development and Communications & Marketing (FFBS). It was definitely an adjustment compared to Operations. Coming in and having the task be different or in general not knowing exactly what to expect was a shock to the system. Compared to Operations where I knew exactly what I was doing, it was a lot out of my comfort zone. Thankfully, it only took me around two weeks to get into the swing of things thanks to the teams being so welcoming and understanding.
During my time, I have: Researched into potential charities we could partner with and planning for the Military Charity campaign, joined internal meetings for newsletter planning and Business Development fortnightly meeting, supported the onboarding process by helping fill in the configuration document, just to name a few. I have enjoyed researching and discovering new information that I otherwise wouldn’t have known.
Whilst working in Communications & Marketing, I have done research into different awareness days that we could be promoting, using Canva to create graphics to use on the social media, and I wrote a blog for the supported internship page on the Family Fund website and helped create captions for various social posts. Working with Communications & Marketing has really helped me get back into writing and creating art.
My third and final term was still with Communications & Marketing, just with the charity side instead. Adjusting wasn’t a problem this time around due to the fact I had at this point been in the office for around 8 months. I already had experience working in Comms & Marketing and the working environment.
Working with the charity side, I did tasks such as checking the social media every morning, researching how different charities do tea breaks/coffee mornings, contributed to the in-office plant sale by creating signs on Canva for the Green Team, created social media assets to explain what Gift Aid is, researched how different charities handled their ‘stories’ and many more different tasks.
Continuing to work with Communications & Marketing has solidified that this is the department I enjoy the most. Even though at first, I thought I might not like it due to how spontaneous some of the work could be, especially compared to Operations where it was very formulaic, I like how creative you can be without having too much pressure put on you.
Throughout my time here I’ve gotten increasingly more confident about being in a workplace environment and talking to people, that being made easier due to the calm and friendly environment. I’ve decided that for my next steps I’m going to do a business course at York College and hopefully get more experience, and maybe even go to university. I want to stay in education for as long as I can and continue job searching in the meantime.
Working for Family Fund/FFBS has been a joy and I have loved all the experience I have gathered. Before the Supported Internship, I had no true idea what I wanted to do, but now I do. It has been such an invaluable experience and I’m so glad that I decided to do this Supported Internship.