By Emily
Reers
The summer after my freshman year, I got my first
official taste of working in the non-profit world as an intern for the
Volunteer Center of Bergen County. I learned a great deal about the non-profit sector
over the course of this summer. First off, I learned about how a non-profit is
run. The Volunteer Center’s mission is to “strengthen the community by connecting people
through service and developing civic leaders.” Accomplishing this mission was their main goal
and the motivation behind all of their actions. The organization was also run
very democratically. While everyone had their positions and there was a
hierarchy, like most companies, everyone helped each another out, bounced ideas
off one another, and worked as a unit to accomplish their mission. It was not a
cut throat environment where people were backstabbing their colleagues to get
to the top, but a friendly, supportive, and enthusiastic environment. The employees’
passion also got me hooked on the non-profit world. Their passion for this
mission was clear in their conversations with community members, during events
and fundraisers, and in all their day to day actions. Every day that I worked
at the Volunteer Center, I left the office knowing that the work that I had
done that day was meaningful and that felt great. In addition, during this
internship I was able to meet so many people from a variety of non-profits in
the area. I was constantly inspired by the people I was meeting. Their desire
to bring about positive change in the world was a breath of fresh air in our
often materialistic, selfish world.
The next three years, I spent a lot of time trying
to figure out what population I wanted to work with once I graduated from
school. I knew that I wanted to work at a non-profit but I did not know what
type of non-profit I wanted to work for. During my time at Providence, I
volunteered at an elementary school, a high school, an orphanage, and a soup
kitchen/food pantry. While I learned so much and thoroughly enjoyed all of
these experiences, I knew that I had yet to find my area of interest. That was
until the second semester of my senior year. I decided to participate in a
spring break school trip to Nicaragua to study Global Coffee Culture. Through
the trip, and a course that our group took on this topic, I found my niche.
When I learned about the injustices that occur in the coffee industry and how
unfair coffee farmers are treated I was outraged. I was constantly researching
the topic and every time I learned more about it my desire to fight against
these injustices grew.
Following graduation, I started applying to jobs in
the fair trade industry and in August I got a job at Equal Exchange, an
authentic fair trade company whose mission is to “build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just
and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between
farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution
of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable
world.” I was hired as a temporary employee and have recently been hired full
time as their Fundraising Program Coordinator. Another great aspect of Equal
Exchange is that it is a worker-owned coop, which means that the company is
democratically run, with each employee having an equal stake and vote in the
company.
I was able to find an
organization that had everything I have been looking for since that summer of
my freshman year. The work environment is supportive, democratic, ambitious,
and inspired. The employees are devoted to accomplishing their mission and fervent
about promoting authentic fair trade. And I leave work every day knowing that
my work is meaningful, that I am that I am working for company whose mission I
passionate about, and that I am playing a small part in trying to end unjust
practices against small farmers all over the world.
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