Interning with Let's Play America over the past few months has been a blast, as well as a valuable learning experience, preparing us for college and a future career. Working with the organization, Let’s Play America provided a unique experience in understanding the operations of a non-profit organization. Our first event, Annual Play Day, helped us develop interpersonal skills and learn what it takes to organize and run events. It also allowed us to explore a new industry we had never experienced before.
At the beginning of our internship, we were tasked with website updates and volunteering at play events. We helped post updates to the website and at events we helped unload equipment, set up for the event, supervised the event which meant engaging with our community, and at the end of the event, we packed-up the equipment. Additionally, since Let's Play America is all about PLAY, we interns and volunteers always participated in the play, of course! We were able to partake in the activities, such as giant chess and board games during the Play Days when we weren’t too busy with intern tasks.
Towards the middle of our internship, we took on the challenging task of rebuilding Let’s Play America’s website, which has been a huge learning experience for us. We started with the original website around January and at first we just wanted general improvements but we realized a remodel was the best solution in the end. This led us to create a template example for one of the pages using Canva. Then we used that to build a style into our current website platform. However, we quickly realized we wanted more out of the site. So with the help of Let’s Play America’s staff, we moved our site into a new domain and platform, which gave us more options but was marginally harder. After this long transition we put our noses to the grindstone and got to work redesigning, building, and completing the whole website in roughly two months. In addition to website work, we also volunteered at various play events, assisted with story walks, filmed and edited footage, and performed a multitude of tasks that helped us grow as professionals and individuals.
Overall, interning with Let's Play America has been one of the highlights of our last year in high school, and we highly recommend it to anyone seeking an internship, work experience, or just something engaging to do that also benefits the community. This experience has provided us with invaluable insights into the inner workings of a non-profit organization, website building, people skills, and work in general. Additionally, we have met a lot of wonderful people and learned about the importance of play, which Let’s Play America strives to teach and successfully instills within the community.
