New Ideas

The grand question that has reoccurred to me at this point of my internship is what is the most important thing that I can do for my organization? Fortunately, my supervisor, in spite of how busy she is, manages to touch base and we’ll talk for hours like we did today on this very topic. I have been coming up with a detailed procedure for ways that the community could become more involved in raising awareness and funds for NCCS. We call it “community packages.” I think we can say that this is my largest project so far. We really want to connect more to the people in the community, especially because NCCS is a NATIONAL coalition. Up until now, as I understand it, NCCS has been recruiting people to engage in the democratic process and advocate for quality cancer care. However, not everyone has that comfort level to “advocate”, at least not yet. Suggesting new ways–simpler ways–for people to get involved with NCCS is naturally the best approach to engage the community before asking them to partake in efforts on a policy level. Besides this, I have also been researching local venues that could potentially donate to NCCS, attending meetings on health care, and calling offices in DC to identify who the legislative aide for health care is for each state (this afternoon, I began with the Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas reps). With all that I am doing, it’s easy to lose sight of what it’s amounting to. I definitely needed an idea of where my place was in the organization. Defining my role in the organization will best help me to figure out how to shape my tasks toward serving the organization. So, what’s my job? My supervisor told me, “New Ideas”. She acknowledged that having someone like me–an outsider–who comes in without the institutional knowledge is vital to help it push through its current organizational restructuring and further its mission. My reaction? I’m the new kid on the block who is invited to observe and make suggestions. Me make suggestions on how a national coalition should move forward? Let’s see where I can go with this.

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