Final Two-Week Report!!

[Jordan Merlo]

Fourteen-weeks ago I started my internship at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connections. Cabrini Connections is a non-profit organization designed to enrich and further develop the lives of the students who live in low-income neighborhoods such as Cabrini Green. They do this by providing tutor/mentor programs for these students after hours, which not only provides alternate learning opportunities but keeps these students out of trouble. At my internship my job is to promote the organization further through social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, volunteer forums, etc. Through this I will help expand others' knowledge of Cabrini Connections, get people to either donate or volunteer at Cabrini, as well as increase my own knowledge of certain social media outlets.

These two-weeks in particular I wrote a blog of advice to the incoming interns, encouraging them to follow my path and to explain to them all that i've learned throughout the entirety of this internship. These past weeks I have added the final touches to my final paper, making sure that it flows well and that I have fully answered my learning question, which was: how to unlease one's personal power to change hte world through social media. These past two-weeks I have accomplished a lot and though I am sad the internship is over, I plan on keeping in touch with the organization as I believe in their cause.

Through this internship I have realized that I truly enjoy working with social media networks. I have come to find that the social media realm is my nitch in the Public Relations profession. However, though I enjoy working with social media I want to go into the event planning field as I believe that I will enjoy that field more. I am a creative person and event planning will enable me to show off my creativity. I feel blessed that I was able to intern at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor connection as it developed my knowledge of social media as a whole. Without this internship I would not have been able to expand my knowledge of Twitter, blogs, and other various social media networks.

As I said earlier Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection has enlightened me on the world of social media. Through this internship I have learned about the vastness of social media and how to effectively use a variety of them. I have been taught how to use tools such as Google analytics to track my blog site visits which has shown to be extremely beneficial. As a result of being able to track my results I have been able to see how effective my writing has become and to see the numbers in my blog site almost double since I first began interning. Working at CC, T/MC has been a huge honor and a blessing as I have learned extensively about certain tactics that will be beneficial to me in my future career.

[Daniel Bassill]

Hi Jordan. Thank you for interning with us for the past few months and for sharing your journey on your blog. I hope you'll post your final paper when it is completed. I was at the University of Iowa this week for an education conference and I was near Purdue University a couple of weeks ago for a mentoring conference.

In both cases the participants are pointed to a complex problem where there are vast amounts of information to be understood, and where the actions of volunteers, donors, leaders, etc. need to be distributed to many locations, and continue for many years.

How do we help people understand all of this information, and use it in ways that are appropriate to where they are, and what their needs are at any given time? How do we keep leaders from burning out, but keep them focused for many years.

This is a question that could be addressed by volunteers, interns, PhD students at each of these universities, and at Loyola, DePaul, and every Chicago university. Hopefully some faculty, alumni and students at these schools will read your blog articles, and those written by others on this site, and will see that this is an invitation for them to become involved.

If just one or two other people picks up from this, or if you keep writing, and someone a year from now responds because of your personal involvement, then we are taking meaningful steps to make change happen in many places of the world.