Fourth-year PCJ student Uma Kalkar recounts her experience interning at Beautiful World Canada as part of  PCJ499: Advanced Service Learning course. In this course, students have the opportunity to immerse themselves in an NGO doing work that interests them and acquire invaluable experience that will inform their decisions for their future careers.

Having previously dipped my toe in NGO fundraising at other non-profits, I was excited to apply my intervention-building techniques and writing skills to reach potential donors and extend my classroom education to the real world. My time at Beautiful World Canada (BWC)  showed me the importance of proper management structures, adequate staffing, and planning work ahead of time. I researched potential grants and designed a health literacy intervention for a Global Affairs Canada (GAC) call for proposals. Using skills learned from PCJ, I workshopped ways to grandfather in a female health module into BWC’s existing “Grad Prep” program. I created a clear logic model and evidence-backed rationale for the project. I sent detailed lists of the documents required for submission, my proposal drafts, and marked which forms required supervisor signatures and financial information outside of my purview. In the second term, I also gained some experience in administrative and clerical work. From BWC, I had the fantastic opportunity to write a GAC grant and apply theoretical global problem solving frameworks to a real world scenario. The insight I gained from viewing their back-end organization, preparedness, and practices were great experiences to carry to other group-based endeavors.