“Next time, try to add more Jim Carrey to it.” This was the advice my senior gave me after I finished my first presentation for the CSR Team. Despite being an admirer of Jim Carrey, I could initially not picture myself incorporating comedy while presenting on issues as serious as sexual harassment, emotional black mailing and cyber bullying etc.
“People relate better to your message if you involve them on a personal level. And best way to do this sometimes is through humour”, he explained himself. At this point I realized that there would be many things I would gain during my internship at the media department of CSR besides a significant increase in knowledge of topics of my interest such as social auditing, capacity building and engendered governance. No university college had ever taught me how to conduct trainings, or how to skilfully adjust your tone to the topic of your speech.I was thrilled to have discovered that CSR takes their interns this serious enough to train them into skills as useful and elementary as delivering an effective training. Indeed, this is refreshing as during my experience in other organizations,I have always seen interns being occupied as clerical assistants carrying around papers or overburdened.
In my case, I can say that I have felt pleasantly busy at work. It has been two weeks since I started and I have done so much already than just delivering this presentation. I also wrote 6 blogs, 1 official letter, reviewed 3 blogs for the “write with us” blog, conducted research on 48 different welfare schemes for women and girl in Delhi, made a head start with the MyLaw online course “the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace Act of 2013” and attended a couple of meetings. With all variety of work to be done, time simply flies by and every day I learn something new.
Most importantly, I can say that I am impressed with CSR’s level of professionalism.This did not come as a surprise however as I knew of CSR leading role as civil actor working for women’s empowerment in India. Their professionalism in fact reflects in everything CSR does. The employees of all the different departments work with an honest commitment to the work they carry out. Moreover, the organisation always seems to hit the nail at the head with its straightforward, out-of-the-box and hands-onapproaches to the field.
It is always a bit nerve wracking to be new intern in the office, but I am happy to have found a work culture in which I feel most comfortable in and inspired by. For a person like me, who always keeps moving between different organizations, institutions, countries and even continents, this is a highly meaningful thing. I am happy that I made the choice to apply here and even more so that there is much time left for me to learn how to become as communicatively effective as Jim Carrey.
Looking forward to reading your blogs, you can mail us your entries at WriteWithUs@csrindia.org, or upload them at Write With Us.
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