Yesterday one of my supervisors, the CEO of Green City Growers, turned to me and marveled over the fact that it is now the halfway point of my internship. Though there are certainly days when it feels like I have been here for months (and sometimes centuries), it is strange to think about how long I have been here and how much time I have left to accomplish my goals for this summer. I think so far I have been following my learning objectives pretty well, which is surprising since I sometimes have trouble with goal setting. A couple of my objectives have to do with understanding the larger food and agriculture system in the Boston area and beyond. I’ve learned about the ways in which a lot of different startups, corporations and nonprofits are partnered with Green City Growers and contribute to the larger food movement happening. Somerville, the suburb of Boston where GCG is located, actually has one of the most active urban agriculture and local food cultures in the Boston area. The mayor of the city, who I met on the first day of my internship, has a real commitment to improving the local food system. This has paved the way for a lot of new projects in the city, such as allowing backyard chicken keeping and greenlighting a huge urban Art Farm project in the city.
From a work perspective, I’ve been coming along well with the schools campaign that I am running, and am already starting on a supermarket campaign. I am also working on rebranding the website, which is a ton of work. The response I have gotten both from the schools I have contacted as well as my supervisors makes it seem like I am doing an okay job so far, though as I said in a previous post, marketing does not come naturally to me. Doing this internship has shown me how much marketing goes into every product and company, and how companies who do not have access to or knowledge about Internet marketing tools are falling behind. Next semester I am a Google Community Leader and so I will get to help right this problem by teaching local NGOs about Google tools and helping them to develop a web presence.
One of the tasks I have had for the past couple of weeks that I was not expecting is creating videos that feature our different restaurant clients creating dishes using the produce we grow for them. I have a little experience with iMovie (witness this animation ‘masterpiece’ I created during my gap year) but still felt pretty shaky with my skills. I’ve already been able to see how my videos have improved with experience, which has been a good marker for my improvement. I have really enjoyed working on the videos, and I hope I can use that skill both this last year in college and in my future jobs. Creating content for marketing purposes has also been another important skill. Selling a product by providing interesting and valuable information makes me warm a bit more to the idea of marketing, which I had qualms about before starting this internship. I am excited to see what other tasks I will take on in the last half of my internship here!