Companionship of Works Organisation (COWA

KENYA

COMPANIONSHIP OF WORKS ORGANISATION (COWA)

Pauline Marie Charlotte Lemaire, BA French and Philosophy, Third Year Undergraduate, Remote working

Work Projects

The internship projects involved revamping their social media, communications and marketing strategies. I implemented many weekly routines for social media content, in order to make my time at CoWA sustainable. I really wanted to make their social media active, and within 4 weeks of working there, our Facebook audiences engagement had increased by 48%. I also developed a whole social media strategy for them to have guidelines once I’m gone. I also redid their whole profile (which they present to sponsors) to make it look clearer and more professional.

Lasting Impressions

I think there are no bad experiences or internships, there is always something to learn. I learnt a lot about the work culture in Kenya, how an NGO works.

Final Year Undergraduate,BA Literae Humaniores, Remote Working

Work Projects

The main task was creating a communications strategy for the organisation. The organisation did not have an external communications strategy in place and so I had to research what makes for a good communications strategy and then write it over the course of the internship. I also had an impact on the work from home strategy of the company, improving the efficiency of meetings and other internal communications. The organisation also asked me to complete other tasks as they came up, such as improving their master slides and automating a database they used for collection of data for one of their projects.

Daily Life

As the opportunity was remote, the main form of communication with the organisation was through weekly video calls in which the entire team talked through their progress over the previous week and their plans for the next week. Apart from this, the majority of the internship involved me managing my own time. I structured my day around an average working day, which was made easier by my housemate working at the same time as me. This meant outside of working we were able to socialise in a normal way.

Lasting Impressions

The experience was challenging because of the nature of the remote working environment. Once I decided to try and improve the company's work from home strategy, I was able to draw on this experience to figure out what needed to change in order to the work from home strategy to succeed.