COLA Fellowship- International Development
Summer 2023 COLA Fellowship Program
The College of Liberal Arts (COLA) Global Racial and Social Inequality Lab (GRSIL) is hosting summer fellowship program for students enrolled in COLA majors. Rising COLA Juniors and Senior students with a passion for sustainable social justice and skills to promote positive change will be paired with a local organization to work for 6 weeks (dates may vary by host site). APPLY FOR ONE OR MORE OF THE 8 FELLOWSHIP HOST SITES.
DESCRIPTION
Modality: 16 hours a week in person or hybrid. Hours are flexible.
Host overview:
Rain for the Sahel and Sahara (RAIN) partners with rural and nomadic communities in Niger to enable enduring and relevant livelihoods through education and opportunity. We envision a world where even the most remote communities have the resources to become resilient to the environmental and socio-political stresses they face on a daily basis.
RAIN 1) empowers communities to build environmentally and economically sustainable food and water systems; 2) strengthens the pipeline for education in rural and nomadic communities; and 3) supports women to build the skills to become entrepreneurs, caring for themselves, their families, and their communities. Ultimately, our programs provide the building blocks for community resilience that will last far beyond the end of RAIN’s involvement.
Our Portsmouth, NH office focuses on fundraising and community outreach. This team supports RAIN’s mission by helping to ensure the organization has adequate resources to carry out its work. This includes developing marketing and fundraising materials, planning and executing events, and supporting other projects that promote RAIN’s work in Niger, Africa.
The COLA fellow will focus on fundraising, community outreach and events. We hope to expand and diversify our donor base. The fellow will work on newsletters, web posts, social media and possibly in-person events to help reach more supporters. Our main fundraiser happens at the very beginning of this program, so hopefully the fellow can start by volunteering at this big event, see they planning that went into it, as well as the follow up and debriefing process. We will shift focus to a capital campaign project, which may involve more support on grant research and compiling language that will be useful in increasing support for this project (both for grants and individual donors). The final outcome will include a compilation of key language or framing that will be useful as we present this campaign in the coming year.
Deliverables:
- A portfolio of newsletters, website posts and social media content created to further our mission.
- A series of posts and increased social media presence, can use metrics from Instagram and Facebook to demonstrate impact.
- Launch “Buzz Word Thesaurus” compiling key language used in international development, community empowerment, women’s empowerment, environmental justice and microfinance programs to strengthen grant applications and presentations.