At my internship with Europe Consulting I felt that I had the opportunity to bring fresh ideas to the table that were implemented. Even during my interview, the Director was explaining different services Europe Consulting offers homeless people in order to help get them back on their feet. He said that they help them write resumes and later talked about all the projects they had available to them in their free time, such as writing articles for their newspaper. I asked if they put that they worked on the newspaper in their resumes and he said they had never thought of that but they would start.
Europe Consulting is a social cooperative that works closely with Termini Train Station, along with other train stations around Europe, in attempts to ameliorate homelessness. I learned about and worked closely with three divisions underneath this non-profit: Binario 95, Bike 95, and The Shaker. Binario 95 is located at Roma Termini train station and is a daily center in which homeless people can sleep, do art projects, and begin to put their lives back together. The offices located in Binario 95 are where I worked with my fellow IES intern. Bike 95 is a bike rental project, which the clients of the daily center are fully in charge of. They are responsible for renting bikes out to customers and the maintenance of the bikes. Lastly, The Shaker is the aforementioned newspaper in which the homeless people write the articles and distribute.
At my first day in the Binario 95 office, my supervisor told us we would be translating from Italian to English. I noticed there was a French tab and offered to help translate to French. He said that while they wanted a page in French, no one at the office spoke French so I would be doing it on my own. I told him I could do Spanish as well and he had the Webmaster add a tab for that too. Even in these early stages of my internship, I was able to positively affect my work environment and bring new elements to their website, including ones they previously did not think were possible.
Lastly, my fellow IES intern and I have been working on promotional videos for their Bike 95 program. One of which is a stop motion of animals riding bikes through Rome, which will be used at the beginning of every Bike 95 video from now on. The other is video clip explaining what Bike 95 is and how to rent bicycles from the kiosk. Both of these clips will be used for many years to come, and I gained self-confidence that they trusted me to handle material that they would be using for so long.
When applying for internships abroad I said that I could bring concepts, systems, and strategies used in America. My past experience from working for non-profits in the United States fused with Italian creativity has enhanced my outlook on tasks in the job world. Italians seem to find a way to bring creativity to every project they are assigned, especially ones that we would find dull. In the US there are many cookie cutter templates of how to assess certain situations, certain marketing strategies, and whatnot. However, even working to promote the projects at Europe Consulting, I was able to implement ideas that I have not had the chance to explore since I took art in high school because creativity is not used for daily tasks in the US the way it is here. I had the opportunity to use my photography and language skills, two things I did not expect to be able to bring to the table this summer. I think I will take back this creative outlook toward business tasks, as that is what turns an average task into a great product.