A Place to Grow: My Internship Experience at Aspire

By Chethu Shivakumar, Development and Communications Intern

I’ve been the Development and Communications Intern at Aspire since last October, and I can undoubtedly say that my time at Aspire for these past eight months has shaped my own perspectives, current values, and future ambitions. I began this role at the start of my senior year at Wakefield High School, and prior to this internship, I had served as a teacher-volunteer at Aspire during my sophomore and junior years. During that time, I got to engage with many of the students first-hand and came to familiarize myself with the engaging environment at Aspire; this friendly and inviting volunteer experience is what urged me to continue wanting to play a role at Aspire during my final year of high school.

Entering this internship, I was excited to work behind-the-scenes at Aspire and understand how this small, local nonprofit works to create such a thriving learning environment for their students. I came in hoping to build my professional development, writing skills, and just overall embrace the opportunity to contribute to Aspire’s positive culture. My supervisor, Maggie McCoy, heard these ambitions and more as she guided me to tasks that allowed me to entirely broaden my skillset and experience. Throughout my time at Aspire, I’ve gained experience in templating grant applications, reaching out to donors, researching new networking and funding opportunities, and analyzing data to inform organizational decisions.  

One of the first projects I recall working on in my role was helping organize the guest list for Aspire’s annual fall community event. I learned to navigate Bloomerang, a software I was completely unfamiliar with prior to this project. I was intimidated at first, but reflecting now, I was able to achieve two major insights out of this project: firstly, I got to see first-hand just how influential Aspire is in the South Arlington community, and secondly, I got to learn just how much commitment goes into organizing such an involved event. By recording and tracking many of the different community interactions with Aspire, it became obvious to me just how powerful a role Aspire plays here in Arlington, which motivated me all the more through understanding the impact of my role here. Learning to navigate a new tool in a short amount of time also showed me my own potential in quickly adapting to something new, which has made me feel much more confident in my own ability to adjust to unfamiliarity. 

Following the funding cuts to AmeriCorps, Aspire has had to shift funding strategies, part of which has been applying for more grants, which is not a small adjustment—though one I am grateful to have gotten to help with through templating many of these grant applications. This work, however, opened my eyes to the persistence prevalent at Aspire; there is never a lack of optimistic and positive energy from the team or the students, even despite the many recent changes they’ve had to endure. Throughout my time here, it’s apparent that Aspire continuously positions themselves through a lens of resiliency by making sure the team, volunteers, and interns have the support they need to grow, as well as creating an environment where it feels safe to fail. With this perspective, Aspire’s core value of connection really stood out to me. The community that Aspire fosters through their student, family, and team connections is entirely because of the effort that goes into maintaining those relationships–I know the sense of belonging I’ve found at Aspire is shared by many who are involved with this organization. 

Furthermore, getting to help with letter writing and donor outreach also demonstrated to me just how committed Aspire is to connection and excellence. Taking the time to personally reach out and thank members of the community through personalized, handwritten writing really showed me how important it is to put in the effort to demonstrate gratitude whenever possible. Aspire builds their connections through a deep commitment to excellence in their program and in all that they do. Beyond writing thank yous, I’ve also had the opportunity to put together short writing on social-emotional learning and project-based learning (PBL), as well as research other programs and opportunities for Aspire. Having mostly written very formal academic papers and essays in high school, some of these writing styles were new and unfamiliar to me. However, through trial and error, I felt that I was able to adjust well to these new formats and learn more about the style of writing that is more apparent in a real-world work environment. Getting to see a PBL-blog post that I helped with published on Aspire’s website was very warming (check it out here!), and has made me so grateful to have broadened my writing experience through this new and different work. 

Though my internship at Aspire is coming to an end in the next few weeks, my path forward has undoubtedly been influenced by my time here. In the fall, I’ll be attending the University of Virginia with an intended major of study in either business or data science, and the latter is something I’d never known my interest for prior to analyzing interaction data at Aspire. But more than that, I’m dedicated to continuing staying involved with non-profits and build my role in furthering social awareness; Aspire’s friendly, tight-knit community has shown me how much power and motivation can stem forth from just a small team with such deep-rooted commitment, and it is something I am determined to continue being apart of in my future. I am so grateful to have been part of such a collaborative, lively, and driven community, and I know that the perspective and growth I’ve gained here will guide me in all my future environments.