Photo provided by Chloe Leckrone
Chloe Leckrone, senior peace studies and English writing major, interned over the summer with Common Table, a Louisville-based program that provides culinary training to adults facing barriers to employment.
Senior Peace Studies Student Discusses Remote Summer Internship
Rocco Hanes
Summer internships are a great time for college students to learn about careers they might find themselves pursuing a life in. This past summer a Manchester student found them self with a great opportunity to do just that. Senior Chloe Leckrone spent two months within the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP) program, which is, according to its website, a nonprofit organization that promotes poverty study programs in undergraduate and professional schools.
The eight-week program, which Leckrone first heard about during a VIA on campus, pairs student interns with nonprofit organizations all across the country, these organizations work to strengthen impoverished communities. Through the program, Leckrone was paired with a organization called Common Table based in Louisville, Kentucky. Common Table teaches those who face employment troubles culinary skills to achieve career and personal success. Leckrone’s internship took place online as they did not travel down across the river to Louisville.
While the time with Common Table was short, Leckrone worked on a wide arrangement of projects. The biggest project they worked on was a research and development of ideas to help the classes get more people signed up. Leckrone and the other intern from SHECP were tasked with looking through a database of all the other organizations in the country similar to Common Table. After compiling a list of all the agencies, they continued on for the next few weeks contacting them in various ways.
As a small organization, Common Table has had struggles getting people in the program. With the help of Leckrone and the other intern a lot of new information was found on how to recruit and get more people in their classes. A specific aspect of Leckrone’s internship involved helping graduates of the program update their resumes. A lot of the students in the classes do not have the resources or know how to do this themselves.
One of Leckrone’s favorite moments of the internship came while helping out one student build their resume. A student was off to a job fair, but before she could go Leckrone helped get her resume squared away. The student went on to get a job at the fair with the help of the resume. “That was a really awesome feeling,” Leckrone said.
Although the SHECP internship is a one-time deal, Leckrone plans to continue on helping with the program. Now they will recruit and encourage a new batch of interns from the campus into the program for next years summer program. Leckrone might also return to give a presentation to next summer’s interns about the experience they had while in their internship.
Leckrone plans on continuing on doing charity work in the future along with being a part of peace programs on campus. With their free time Leckrone is the Kenapocomoco Peace Coalition vice president, the Oak Leaves co-editor, and a Writing Center consultant on campus. Other hobbies they enjoy are writing, reading and biking.