Odin and co-worker enjoying working outside!
Hello! My name is Odin McDermott, and I’m a rising junior majoring in Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse (RWPD) and sociology, with a likely psychology minor. This summer, I’m working as the Communications Intern for the Sustainable Living Center (SLC). The SLC is a nonprofit that works to help the Walla Walla Valley engage in greener practices. They work to create gardens in local schools, help homeowners and businesses decrease their carbon footprints (along with their expenses), and even have a construction goods store where you can “thrift” things for your next home renovation project! This summer, my job is to best share these programs and events through the SLC’s social media accounts.
Because the SLC has so many different events, resources, and opportunities, I think it’s really important for the organization to promote these things clearly and effectively on social media. Some of the work I’m doing is creating specific highlight reels and infographics to put on the main @slcwallawalla Instagram page: people can then quickly learn about, say, the Community Energy Efficiency Program (CEEP) quickly without having to do much digging through past posts.
This internship has definitely been a huge learning experience. I have a lot of experience writing (I would hope so! Writing is in the name of one of my majors!), but the visual emphasis of Instagram has forced me to reorient myself on how I communicate–people go on Instagram for pictures, not words, and so I need to use that knowledge to share information. I’ve also been using social media scheduling tools and graphic design tools for my work, and I’m really appreciating the hands-on learning that I’m having on these platforms.
I think a really unexpected learning experience of this internship, though, was getting a really good glimpse of the nonprofit sector. I thought that I’d be learning mostly about communications/marketing and less so about what I was marketing (nonprofits), but that’s not the case. The Sustainable Living Center does a great job of showcasing something that I’ve learned about in my rhetoric classes: coalition building. I’ve taken a course on rhetoric in coalitions as well as a course focusing on rhetoric and education within the Walla Walla Valley. Both of them emphasized how connected social issues are: for example, in order to examine education, you need to also look at the neighboring institutions of incarceration, health, and more. The Sustainable Living Center looks at its central belief of sustainability and then works on promoting it from dozens of angles: food security, nutrition education, commerce, and so many more. While it can be daunting to cover all of that on social media, I think it’s proof of an incredibly effective nonprofit. This is something I should keep in mind for my career goals. As someone really interested in nonprofits and community organizing, my firsthand experience of what the SLC does well is going to go a long way in any post-Whitman employment. Additionally, I could potentially examine the SLC for my sociology thesis (pending title: “Nonnegotiable Networks in the Nonprofit Industry: a Sociological Examination of Nonprofits in the Walla Walla Valley).
Well, I guess I can’t even go 600 words without bringing the conversation back to my academic studies. Nerdiness aside, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my internship experience at the Sustainable Living Center. Also, please check out the Sustainable Living Center’s Instagram page. I’m personally really looking forward to the upcoming public workshop series running until mid-August, and I hope to see you there! Thank you so much to Whitman and the Whitman Internship Grant (WIG) for making this internship experience possible!
Experiences like Odin’s are made possible by the Whitman Internship Grant, which provides funding for students to participate in unpaid internships at nonprofit, some for-profit, and government organizations. We are happy to be sharing blog posts from students who were supported by either a summer, fall, spring, or year-long grants at organizations, businesses, and research labs all around the world. To learn how you could secure a Whitman Internship Grant or host a Whitman intern at your organization, contact us at ccec_info@whitman.edu.