My charity work experience

If you’re looking for a career in charity, Edmund Woodfield explains how work experience can help.

''International Care and Relief works to improve the lives of young people in Africa by helping to construct schools and providing work-related training.'' ''What bigger motivation can there be to turn up at work every day than knowing that the job you are doing is lifting thousands of children in Africa out of poverty and in to a life where they can have a decent future?''

It’s that wonderful time of year when exams are over and you can get involved in more interesting things with your time than memorising formulae and sitting in dingy school halls frantically writing all day.

For me, the past week has been occupied with work experience at International Care and Relief - a charity that works to improve the lives of young people in Africa by helping to construct schools and providing work-related training.

Although I am not traditionally the kind of child International Care and Relief helps, they kindly agreed to offer me my own work-related training!

Since I’ve been interested in poverty campaigning, I’ve started to consider work in the charity sector. Therefore work experience with a local charity seemed like a brilliant way to see whether a job in this field is right for me. After all, in a world where 46 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa can’t go to school, charities like Oxfam and International Care and Relief are so necessary to improve the lives of the people who are otherwise condemned to a subsistence existence with no hope. But it’s the staff and supporters who allow this help to reach those in need.

During my weeks work experience I spent time in all three of the charity’s departments. These were Fundraising, Programmes and Finance & Administration. This meant I completed tasks as varied as processing credit card donations for a World Cup sweepstake, making collages about myself and my thoughts on Africa, and writing a summary report about trade, aid and debt to help them to focus their campaigning and advocacy work.

In fact it was the variation of different kinds of work involved with running a charity that struck me most. Whether the staff are processing generous public donations, allocating those resources or designing a flashy new website on a rather uncooperative computer, they are all essential to the health of the charity and its affect on the communities it benefits.

After my week’s work experience it was clear that working in a development charity would be a rewarding and enjoyable career path for me to follow.

What bigger motivation can there be to turn up at work every day than knowing that the job you are doing is lifting thousands of children in Africa out of poverty and in to a life where they can have a decent future? That and a tempting bucket of flapjacks sitting on the reception desk!