Week 3 introduced me to the concept of working from home. Although I had previous experience working remotely during the Covid years when I was still in high school, I was a stranger to professional work. City Year Columbus is kind enough to give us Juneteenth off, so I worked remotely the other days. Although it went over smoothly for the most part there was some miscommunication about expectations for a project which could have been avoided had we been in person. However, as fate would have it the power went out that day. 

One of my tasks was drafting thank you letters to everyone who had given to the organization in the past month. We lacked a personal aspect to the cards, so we incorporated language about the seasons to connect with our donors. I loved being able to infuse my passion for nature in my professional writing. I feel like it’s rare that our passions align with our work, especially in corporate settings so it was refreshing to get to lean into mine.

During the previous week, I had been mentored in our mailing communications so this week I was allowed to experiment with our monthly newsletters. I designed the June and July editions trying to maintain our brand image while exploring different stories. I also had meetings with Andrew and Ashley who are part of our Core Talent Acquisition (CTA) team and oversee recruitment. 

While meeting with Ashley she posed a question asking if the Devo team would collaborate on one-pagers about the upcoming AmeriCorps members with headshots and bios. I quickly accepted as I was already thinking about ways to highlight the AmeriCorps members more through social media/recruitment.

My favorite project I got to work on was a graphic that would be handed out at the Columbus Book Festival detailing the work City Year Columbus does, our connection to the importance of literacy, and statistics depicting the impact we’ve had. I had already worked with Canva in the past for school projects, so I was familiar with the platform. I was able to find a design template I liked and adjust it to meet the organization’s needs. 

Overall the past week taught me the importance of clear and constant communication as the only path forward to growth and eventually success.