Line Manager Name: Harry Moreton
Job Title: Charity Development Officer
Pathways Programme: Pathways to Charity and Development
Organisation Summary: Exeter City Community Trust is Exeter’s leading health and wellbeing charity
working in partnership with Exeter City Football Club. We deliver inspiring physical activity, education, health & wellbeing programmes and courses primarily across Devon and Somerset for all members of the community, regardless of ethnicity, age, gender, physical activity, background or economic status.
How did hosting an intern via the Professional Pathways programme benefit you and your organisation?
Exeter City Community Trust were delighted in taking on 2 interns through the Professional Pathways scheme at the University of Exeter. Both interns were able to produce high quality, tangible outputs for us within a very short space of time, which proved to be a great benefit to our organisation over the summer.
Examples of work produced during this week:
Grants and fundraising research – one intern produced an excellent grant report for us of which summarised the grants and funding received by similar organisations (sports and health and wellbeing charities) across the country. With this, we will be able to identify grants of which are applicable to our own charity, and see where we can apply for new funding to support our current, or even new, projects/programmes to be delivered in the community.
Project planning – by collaborating together with the interns, we were able to devise a plan of action for a new summer Holiday Activity and Food programme to be delivered to 50+ refugee children currently residing in Exeter. The interns were able to plan 2 weeks worth of activities, which included equipment to be purchased and considerations around staffing on each day. Two weeks of exciting activities were planned, and we look forward to delivering these in August.
Women’s football (strategy report and social media campaign) – We set the task of challenging our interns to explore how we could increase our engagement with the local community around women’s sport and most notably, Exeter City Women’s Football Club. From this, a well thought out and detailed social media campaign was devised, of which seeks to engage our social media viewers with activities, whilst also challenging the stigma associated with women and girls participating in sport and physical activity. This was of great benefit, as we had not previously worked on a campaign similar, thus, we are excited to launch this at the end of the summer for the new season.
How was your experience of hosting a Pathways intern?
Our interns worked full-time for a week and this was a mixture of in-office work, and out-of-office support on the events we had running during their working weeks. The working environment at Exeter City Community Trust is very dynamic, with no two days the same. Having our interns based within the office meant that they were able to adapt their work accordingly to new projects/work that may have been brought through the door at any time. This meant that they gained a good sense of what it is like to work in our environment, whilst being exceptionally supportive each day with a variety of tasks.
Given the Professional Pathways internship is 35 hours in total, how would you recommend ensuring both you and your intern(s) gain as much as possible from the experience?
We had a designated intern manager to support the students during their internships. The intern manager was tasked with inducting the students and gaining an understanding of their interests and skillset to set work accordingly based around this. Getting to know the interns and their interests, proved to be of great importance as it meant that we were able to set work and projects that were tailored towards their skillsets, meaning the output produced was of great quality, despite only spending one week at the Trust.
Why would you recommend Professional Pathways to other employers?
It enables you to benefit from the work of highly motivated and dedicated students.