"Over the summer I focused on the End Poverty Innovation Challenge (EPIC) team program, a social entrepreneurship program to be established at post-secondary institutions in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. The mission of SVF is to support the next generation of youth entrepreneurs to develop social programs to address Sustainable Development Goal 1. I worked on drafting the EPIC team's governance policy with the executive director to structure the program, give details around implementation, and how to elect the board of directors. We connected with Deloitte to hold working sessions on editing and improving the governing body. To get ready for the 2022 program launch, I participated in discussions with educators and social entrepreneurs to strategically identify and coordinate discussions with post-secondary institutions to participate in EPIC. As the summer progressed, I worked on financial models to budget the program and wrote grant proposals.

During the first-year of my MPA-DP program, the DP Lab course provided helpful tools and templates that helped me structure the internship experience and divide it into phases to keep focused on the tasks at hand. I used templates such as logframes and goals and objective setting templates to have a clear focus on the tasks I would work on and the objectives to complete the tasks. The project planning skillset I learned helped me organize my tasks and keep a focus on the program objectives. Writing reports on the SDGs in Sustainable Developmnet Policy and Practice and DP Lab during the first year gave me a stronger writing skillset that allowed me to write the governance structure for the EPIC program and do a lot of targeted grant writing to appeal to grant writers

A lack of organizational development made it difficult to proceed with work without first building the backbone of the project and getting programmatic details in order. The remote aspect of the summer made it difficult to synergize with the team, which made it difficult to get eyes on the work of other team members and to get a whole picture of how other team members operated. The grant writing aspect was difficult because of the lack of exposure to grant funders and needing to build relationships from a ground-up approach.

I developed greater respect for those who put their time and work into nonprofit management. It was a great learning experience working in a startup environment and getting the experience of working independently to achieve the program goals. I learned the importance of effective communication in a remote working world to develop relationships with team members and to formulate strong ideas to engage stakeholders and grant writers. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to gain experience working in a startup nonprofit environment, and it will be a valuable experience I will carry with me into future career opportunities."