Hi everyone! Jessica Wang here, excited to be starting off the blog!
I will be working as an intern for The Durham Economic Resource Center with two other DukeEngage students, Emma and Canshu. DERC is a nonprofit organization that was started five years ago with the mission of “providing workforce development skills, job placement, and the elimination of employment barriers for our clients through facilitated supportive collaborations”. Basically, DERC aims to address the root causes of poverty in Durham through strategies that are both community-based and need based.
The DERC warehouse itself is a place for community members to purchase clothing, jewelry, and other accessory non-food items at a discounted price (these items are all donated and new), and then there is a training program that seeks to provide the “chronically unemployed and hard to employ” with the means to attain jobs. This is done through skills-based classroom training at a local community college as well as on-the-job training at the warehouse itself.
After we arrived at DERC on our first day via the Bull City Connector, we were given a brief orientation by Precious, who will be our main supervisor for the duration of the internship while the CEO Jackie is out of town. She gave us a tour of the facility and more information on the project that our DE team will be working on. Because our first day of work happened to be on a Wednesday, we then attended our first weekly staff meeting and got to meet the rest of the DERC employees. So far, I really like the laid-back atmosphere; DERC prides itself on being a place where their employees are given a lot of independence.
DERC, in collaboration with the Durham Literacy Center and Urban Ministries, is making plans to launch a new program in the fall that will require volunteer tutors. We haven’t received much information about the program yet, but what we are doing is essentially coming up with an entire business plan/strategy to recruit, train, and match volunteers with DERC participants who test below the seventh grade proficiency level on the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE). As there is currently no tutor program in place at all, we are starting with nothing and hopefully going to end the internship with a manual outlining our strategy, as well as at least 10 volunteers. At the moment, this seems like a very daunting task but I’m looking forward to getting to know Emma, Canshu, and the other employees through this project!
I will be working as an intern for The Durham Economic Resource Center with two other DukeEngage students, Emma and Canshu. DERC is a nonprofit organization that was started five years ago with the mission of “providing workforce development skills, job placement, and the elimination of employment barriers for our clients through facilitated supportive collaborations”. Basically, DERC aims to address the root causes of poverty in Durham through strategies that are both community-based and need based.
The DERC warehouse itself is a place for community members to purchase clothing, jewelry, and other accessory non-food items at a discounted price (these items are all donated and new), and then there is a training program that seeks to provide the “chronically unemployed and hard to employ” with the means to attain jobs. This is done through skills-based classroom training at a local community college as well as on-the-job training at the warehouse itself.
After we arrived at DERC on our first day via the Bull City Connector, we were given a brief orientation by Precious, who will be our main supervisor for the duration of the internship while the CEO Jackie is out of town. She gave us a tour of the facility and more information on the project that our DE team will be working on. Because our first day of work happened to be on a Wednesday, we then attended our first weekly staff meeting and got to meet the rest of the DERC employees. So far, I really like the laid-back atmosphere; DERC prides itself on being a place where their employees are given a lot of independence.
DERC, in collaboration with the Durham Literacy Center and Urban Ministries, is making plans to launch a new program in the fall that will require volunteer tutors. We haven’t received much information about the program yet, but what we are doing is essentially coming up with an entire business plan/strategy to recruit, train, and match volunteers with DERC participants who test below the seventh grade proficiency level on the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE). As there is currently no tutor program in place at all, we are starting with nothing and hopefully going to end the internship with a manual outlining our strategy, as well as at least 10 volunteers. At the moment, this seems like a very daunting task but I’m looking forward to getting to know Emma, Canshu, and the other employees through this project!