“A kid will sleep on the street tonight” – My first week with the Covenant House

This summer I will be one of fourteen interns working with the Covenant House Headquarters in New York City. The headquarters has two locations; one on 8th avenue between 33^rd and 34^th street and one on 10th avenue between 40^th and 41^st street. The second address is also home to the New York Covenant House Shelter. I work at the 34^th street building, only a two minute walk from Penn station and one of the busiest parts of New York City.

The Covenant House works to help children who are homeless by providing shelter and other necessities. They work to fulfill the immediate needs of the youth in addition to providing resources to help them create a life of stability and security off the streets. The NYC shelter works mainly with individuals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. Click here to read a recent article written by CNN that captures the Covenant House’s story and mission.

There are Covenant Houses in twenty-two different cities, and while most shelters are located in the United States there are several shetlers in Canada and Latin America. There is also a Covenant House in our very own city – New Orleans!

Although each city’s location brings unique challenges to the youth they work with, several programs are consistent throughout most of the shelters. There is a focus on meeting immediate needs (food, clothing, and personal hygiene), mental health needs, and physical needs. There are both temporary shelters and long term programs. The temporary shelters can last up ninety days and the long term programs and provide housing for two years. Other programs include rehab for substance abuse, caseworker support for individuals looking for employment, and GED and academic courses (to name a few). There is also a program that work with the specific needs of young mothers. This program provides a day care which allows the young mother to find employment or go back to school.

This summer my time will be split between three departments: the Efforts to Outcome department, the Telemarketing department, and the Faith Community department program. Effort to Outcome, also called ETO, is the database system used by the Covenant house. When a child enters a shelter, leaves a shelter, and any time in between when they attend a meeting, workshop, class, etc. the staff member the resident works with must fill out a report. These reports keep data across the all the shelters and can help track the performance of a child.

Until recently each city used its own method for receiving this data. Currently, the Covenant House is transitioning to create one system that is uniform across all shelters. They have decided to use software called “Effort to Outcome”. About half of the shelters have already started using the new software and I will be further assisting in this transition process. I will be going over old reports and customizing them to the specifics of each city. Today I was also asked to create a new report using the software.

One exciting component to this project is the opportunity to listen in on conference calls when working with other cities on how to use the software and how we can customize it to each city’s unique practices; today we spoke with Michigan! This is the first project that I will be working on. My supervisors already spoke about a second project I will work on when this ends… but I can talk about that in the next blog post! After about two weeks I will transition to a new department and receive a new project to work on and for the last month of my internship I will work with a third department.

Additionally, every other week six other interns and I will walk over to the New York shelter and serve lunch to the kids. We will also have other opportunities to volunteer with the Covenant House. Next Tuesday I will be volunteering at the Covenant House’s fundraiser “A Night of Broadway Stars”.

I found this internship through the website Idealist.org. I highly recommend this website to anyone who is looking to get involved with a nonprofit. On the website different nonprofit organizations post internship, job, and volunteer opportunities. The nonprofits address a variety of social issues, and I have complete confidence everyone could find something that interests them on this website!

After finding and applying to this internship I was contacted for an interview, provided two references, and was later offered one of the internship positions.

Although there are fourteen interns, we only see each other in passing or while volunteering at the shelter for lunch. Most other times each intern works with their individual department unless your department has more than one intern. Despite the separation I have become friendly with several other interns. It was interesting to learn how different we all are. Some interns commute into the city from New Jersey, others commute from different areas of New York City; and some interns are in undergraduate while others are in graduate school. However, whenever they bring the whole group of interns together everyone gets along very well.

This week has been extremely interesting. Although I have had internships before, this one is quite different. A lot of my experience has be doing hands on work for nonprofits and working directly with the targeted population. However, here I sit in an office building in business casual attire at my own cubicle with my own laptop. I have never been exposed to the corporate side of a nonprofit, until now.

My cubicle is located on a separate floor from my supervisors. It is located where the telemarketers make their calls and ask for donations for the Covenant House. I have learned a lot just from listening to each person talk on the phone. It has been interesting hearing telemarketers from a different perspective. I am usually the one answering the telephone, but just the location of my space in the office has allowed me to see something new.

That is what I am most excited about this summer – getting a variety of experiences and learning about all the different departments. I have already learned about an interesting project a co-intern of mine is working on with the human resources department. I’ve enjoyed simply listening to other interns and covenant house staff members speak about their jobs and experiences.