My time interning with Youth in Motion has been an incredibly unique experience. Drawing on the advice we were given in preparatory sessions with the Arts Internship Office, I learned early on in my internship that the experience was truly going to be what I made of it. In other words, it provided significant opportunities to grow and learn from experiences and people around me, but it was very much up my will to take advantage of them.
I hadn’t spent a significant amount of time working with a community organization in this capacity previously. This internship showed me the unique and important role that a community organization like YIM plays in their communities. Moreover, as I worked closely with Michael Farkas, I observed first hand how the role of a community organizer is equally unique and important. In fact, the job is so unique that no two weeks really looked identical. Broadly speaking, some of my tasks included event organizing, poster designing, errand running, budget calculating, social media content creating, administrative working, and, of course, active listening. While these tasks give a decent idea as to the sort of services and support offered by community workers, the list does not fully do justice illustrating how community workers are in many ways depended on as we the hearts and souls of their communities. Everywhere we went, weather it be to talk to the kids at YIM, helping distribute food at BUMP, setting up events at CEDA, or just walking in between locations in the Little Burgundy community, Michael had incredible personal relationships with various types of people which established his role as a trusted figure in the community. While not necessarily attributable to any one tangible role or job, Michael’s overall presence and status in the community is noticeable in the social fabric of the community to anyone who visits. This demonstration of the importance of interpersonal relationships in community work showed me that while expertise and knowledge are extremely important to such a role, there are certain intangibles that contribute equally to bettering the social fabric of a community.
Regarding my personal experience helping out at YIM, I tried my best to frame my role in this environment authentically as an intern. Being an intern is not always about having clearly defined roles or particular expertise, but instead about navigating how to lend your help while understanding that you are there to learn. In this way, I sought to keep learning at the forefront of my experience .The main type of learning was not necessarily a traditional skill that interns at other types of organizations have acquired. Instead, I found myself learning immensely from each individual around me in this environment which is unique to any I have known before. I had the pleasure of learning from people with vastly different life experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives from me. A large part of this was simply conversations I found myself engaging with about the experiences of my co workers. Some amazing examples of the experiences and stories they shared with me were the history of break dance in the Black community, the challenges many couples looking to adopt children face under the current administrative system, and the way that the experience of being exiled from many countries has shaped Jewish communities around the globe. All of this is to say that this internship has allowed me to grow and learn in ways which were certainly not expected but instead were discovered thanks to the incredible people I was able to interact with and form personal relationships with during my internship.
