As I enter the second half of my summer with Brotherhood, Inc., I have been reflecting on my learning goals that I established before I even set foot in the office. The biggest thing, for me, that I wanted to achieve this summer here was personal growth in understanding cultural competency and weaving that cultural competency into my own Public Health education. As I reflect, I do believe that this growth in cultural competency has been my biggest take away from this internship–I am learning so much about health disparities not only in New Orleans but also in the United States, and this knowledge and awareness guides how the health sector interacts with vulnerable populations.
This learning goal is, of course, pretty intangible and difficult to measure. However, each day I walk into the office I have gained something new from the day before, no matter how small, and those small developments shape and shift the way that I engage with our clients and our staff. This learning goal is also tied into how this internship is fine-tuning my leadership skills. Diversity and inclusion are two major buzzwords in discussions surrounding leadership right now, but this cultural competency is truly making me a better leader. With the understanding of the community’s needs and follower’s needs, a leader is able to step back to look at the big picture on how best to serve the community, the followers, and the agency. Further, the deputy director of Brotherhood, Incorporated is a woman, and being able to work with and learn from a determined and passionate woman has greatly enhanced my understanding of what it means to be a woman AND a leader. I have watched this woman stand firm in what she believes in and stand up for what is right for the community and for Brotherhood, and this determination and sheer will is something I hope to emulate in my professional development.
A project I am currently working on is a concise and clear infographic series detailing all of the different programs that Brotherhood offers. Brotherhood’s programs are expansive, detailed, and varying in services offered, so my hope for this series is that having all of the necessary information in one tangible place with help staff, future interns, and clients navigate exactly what it is that we do and how we can best serve the community. I am very excited about this project because I have recently had an interest in graphic design, and working on this project allows me to work with different online software in promoting health messaging, a skill I hope I will be able to fine-tune and continue to use as I work in Public Health.
Another highlight from this summer, and perhaps my favorite day of the internship, was National HIV Testing Day. On June 27th, Brotherhood set up testing stations and raffle ticket stations and other incentives in two different Walgreens stores in New Orleans. For the entire day (10am-7pm) we offered free HIV testing for anyone and everyone, raffling off two flat-screen televisions and two tickets to Essence Festival. I loved this day because it was so many great Public Health activities rolled into one day–outreach, prevention, health education. We tested over one hundred clients that day, and it was inspiring to see such a tangible effect on the community.