A Day in the Life of a Gladney Intern

BLOG ENTRY #3: Settling In This week I learned I am going to be working in Family Services with Camille. So that I would know more about the agency, we took a tour. Gladney is a large facility, the tour must have taken 30 minutes! But I was able to meet the majority of the staff, see all of the different departments (Family services, Domestic, International, New Beginnings, ABC , Post Adoption), and view the vault to learn about the involved filing systems.   Everyone has been so nice and welcoming here, I am very excited to begin work! I was notified last week that there would be a conference on Thursday morning where all of the interns would have the opportunity to meet the President of Gladney, Frank Garrott. I may have been a bit nervous at first but after meeting everyone, I felt like I was really a part of the agency. The President Frank Garrott took a keen interest in learning who we all were and where we were coming from in our lives. He even told us a little bit a...

I've been interning at Gladney for 6 or 7 weeks and I love it! It is not an internship where I come in and do all the jobs that nobody wants. Instead, I work on projects that really need to be done. I have been able to spend a lot of time in design programs, mainly InDesign , creating templates, brochures, post cards etc. The best part is I can see the finished product - I worked on the Christian Perspective brochure for a while and last week we printed a short run to get those brochures in people's hands. It is so great to be able to see the job complete and know that I'm making progress and Gladney's need is being met. The marketing interns - there are three of us right now - are in charge of planning an Orphan Sunday event to take place on the Gladney campus on November 7. We've all said we want to keep planning that event after school starts because it's our project, not just something we're kind of working on and can let someone else finish. Somethi...

Yesterday I had the chance to attend the monthly staff meeting and learn more about Gladney – both about its internal traditions and about where the organization stands. The staff meeting had several cute traditions – they announced the birthdays and anniversaries this month at Gladney; they had cake to celebrate the birthdays; and they read aloud the “stars” of the month. Gladney seems to go above-and-beyond in building an internal community and making it an enjoyable work environment. It was also interesting to hear Frank Garrott (Gladney’s President and CEO) give an update on where Gladney stands financially this month. He talked about development plans as well as a future endowment campaign. It will be exciting to see how Gladney grows.