Student Name: Alice
Pathway Programme: Pathways to Charity and Development
Internship Role: Impact Research Assistant
Internship Employer: Turning Heads
Summary of Organisation: Turning Heads is a community interest company (CIC) working across 3 sites in Torbay – a social supermarket, a day service and a community cafe. Turning Heads works with families in need, adults with disabilities and people furthest from employment. We currently have 31 staff and of this staff set we have 17 staff who have a disability.
Please briefly outline the project/tasks/responsibilities you worked on during your Professional Pathways internship:
“The first task I had to complete for Turning Heads was the creation of three different surveys that were tailored to their three different sites: the skills centre, the social supermarket, and the Tea Leaf cafe. I did this with another intern.
The skills centre survey in particular had to be accessible for people with additional needs, so we decided to use a strongly disagree – strongly agree scale for our answers.
During the week, we had to visit each site and interview clients, customers and staff. We did use the surveys, but we also asked some on-the-spot questions of people who were willing to give more in-depth answers.
We used this information to write up an impact report for the charity. This was 2 pages, so we had to condense a lot of the information we gathered. We used pie charts and images to make it more visual.”
How has the Professional Pathways programme helped you in taking the next steps in your career?
“The Professional Pathways programme has helped me to decide that I would definitely like to work in the charity sector. I found the internship very engaging, as I met such a wide range of people who all spoke so highly of Turning Heads. It was genuinely life-changing for them, with clients and customers describing great improvements to their mental health and the development of personal relationships. I think working in a sector where you can have such a positive influence would be very motivating.
The training also influenced my decision. As part of the training I was tasked with working with 5 others to create standardised methods for the Pelican Project to use to approach their partnerships. I really enjoyed this process. Learning about the Pelican Project and their aim pushed me to deliver the best possible output. I learned that really believing in the cause makes it a lot easier to work hard at something, and also makes the final product feel a lot more rewarding. This makes the charity sector very appealing. Speakers at the training also discussed key skills necessary for the charity sector, such as resilience and empathy. I think my experience volunteering for charities has helped me to develop these skills, so I feel I would be a good fit for the charity sector.
I will be using my Pathways experience to help me apply for the Charityworks programme. This involves being paired with a charity for a year and working for them, and my pathways experience will be really helpful in demonstrating the skills they are asking for, and an interest in the charity sector.”
What achievement(s) were you particularly proud of during your Pathways internship?
“I was proud of myself for pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I was nervous before the internship as interning at Turning Heads involved interviewing a variety of people. I can be shy, so this felt very daunting. But I went right up to clients and customers and asked to interview them, and each time I felt the interviews went better and I was more comfortable asking follow up questions. I think it was a great experience to build confidence and resilience.
I was also proud of the impact report I wrote up with another intern. We struggled at first as neither of us had done this before, and our first draft wasnāt the best! But I felt the final product was colourful, engaging and very representative of Turning Heads. It was great to hear that the charity have already used the report for grant applications!”