Some final thoughts from a lucky Intern

Well unfortunately, as the school year draws to an end so does my time as an intern here at HOME. When I first became an intern I didn’t really know what to expect from HOME or what my role was going to be. But as we worked together we figured it out. What I had first expected was basically interaction with the youth, spending time talking with them and hanging out and seeing how I could be helpful. But since I was only here once a week it was a little more difficult to develop those relationships than I thought. I mean I could definitely hang out and have casual conversation but I guess didn’t develop the relationships that I at first expected. However, the longer I was here the more I realized that these youth have wonderful relationships with the other staff here at HOME. The staff that are here every day and have been here a while are great and have earned their friendships with the youth. Even though this part of the internship didn’t turn out quite as I thought, I was able to make myself useful in other ways. I loved being able to do this blog to keep people in the Salem community aware of what goes on here at HOME and all of the awesome youth that come here, and also hopefully raise some awareness about the issues that we as a community are facing. I also enjoyed getting to be a part of some grant writing. Now that doesn’t seem very exciting and I’m sure the more I had to do it the more frustrating it would get, but I really liked that it was something that I could do to take off the plate of the other staff. Peggy, the Outreach Team, and the HOME staff all have sooooo much to do all the time and if I could do something, that would hopefully be beneficial to the HOME program, I was very happy to do so. I learned so much about what it takes to run an organization like this one and how much of a struggle it is to get funding and I am just so amazed at how they do it all. I consider myself lucky to have been able to work here and contribute to this program in any way I could. Thank you for reading and please don’t stop! Just because my time as an intern is done doesn’t mean the blog still won’t be updated and let you know of the awesome, amazing, wonderful, and fun things happening at HOME!!