Gender Equality, NGO Work, Mental Health and the Arts - Internship Reflections
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I am an undergraduate student pursuing a B.A. in psychology at the City College of New York and was a social media intern with Colors of Connection this spring. Colors of Connection is a non-profit organization driven to create change within the lives of individuals through creativity.
As a creative person myself, creativity for me is a way of expressing my thoughts whether through the arts, writing, photography, or communications. With these interests in mind alongside my studies of the human psyche and passion for human rights, I became intrigued to learn more about how creativity can address mental health issues.
As a social media intern my responsibilities included posting on our social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), creating graphics using resources from adobe creative suite, and collecting a monthly analysis of our social media engagement.
“ Post-graduation, I hope to pursue a career working with young children and women overcoming such challenges whether that’s in medicine or education. I also do possibly see myself working towards creating my own NGO. ”
Each week's postings were organized into different themes including gender inequality, art and mental health, girls' education, inspirational artists, and Colors of Connection’s impact.I was able to choose which topics I wanted to find articles about and create posts. I also had the flexibility to research the organization's past and present projects and raise awareness of our work.
Creating posts and building more awareness for our most current project Girl Awakening was especially interesting. The Girl Awakening Program focused on supporting girls with a safe space and opportunities which included scholarships funds, health awareness, and arts education.
Though mental health is a very important part of our lives it is often given little importance. Colors of Connection's goal is to create an environment where girls and women can speak about their mental health struggles comfortably. It showed me how important nourishing a safe space is where girls and women won’t feel alone and recognize the importance of their voice.
Although my internship was entirely online, looking at various pictures of different murals from both our own work and the artwork of other artists showed me how people can communicate through art.
Colors of Connection’s work has inspired me to learn more about the issue of education, mental health, and gender equality in my own country, Bangladesh. Post-graduation, I hope to pursue a career working with young children and women overcoming such challenges whether that's in medicine or education. I also do possibly see myself working towards creating my own NGO.
Overall, I feel much more inspired working in the field of social media and contributing to a part of Colors of Connections work, I would like to thank my site coordinator Christina for taking the time to meet with me each week regarding my progress.These past months have been a valuable experience and I look forward to assessing the skills I learned going forward.
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