My First 2 days in the Oxjam Team

I’ve only been here two days and my head is full to bursting!! I’m a new intern in the Oxjam team and these first few days have been great fun + I’ve already learnt a tonne. Since going to university and getting involved in charity fundraising I’ve wanted to work in this area. Therefore when I saw the opportunity for an internship with Oxfam on their website I jumped at the chance. I’m from Oxford and so Oxfam’s always been one of the main charities that I support, and what I love about Oxjam is that it’s a charity event which spans the whole country and involves so many different communities. Anyone and everyone can put on a music event and raise money for Oxfam and the Oxjam team’s job is to help and support you guys put on these events.

My first impression of Oxfam’s main office was of a place with a buzz of energy. I had a tour of the building and everywhere I went there was someone to explain and give me yet more interesting information about what their department does. There is such a diverse range of departments: ranging from Media to Fundraising to Publishing and it’s going to be interesting finding out how they all fit together to make Oxfam a successful charity.

 

The team I work with here are very approachable and we’ve already had two team lunches and two meetings, which is great as I feel accepted into the group. It’s a fun crowd of people and everyone has a silly side. This side of people’s personalities was clearly visible as we planned an event to get everyone in Oxfam raise money for Oxjam. At this meeting ideas progressed from ‘guess the number of badges in the pot’, to karaoke and then to the idea of waxing the legs of the manager of Oxjam!! That will be fun to see…

My job is to keep track of the social networking sites and I’ve started to learn the language of html. However the first language I’ve had to get my head around was all of the acronyms they use here. At first I was baffled by the conversations they had:
“ There have been 20 MEO’s registered today” “Have you done your IS and VDU inductions yet”. I am now a bit better at the jargon and the conversations are now making sense!

My job also involves being in contact with lots of the people who are organising events for April and I’ve been more and more impressed with what’s going on in the UK. In fact it’s made me want to take holiday for the whole of April and do a tour of all of these events

It’s been a fun two days and I’m looking forward to the next 6 months. The only thing bad thing that I’ve got to get used to is waking up early in the morning. On my second day I came into work wearing two different earrings, due to my sleepy state that morning, and I didn’t notice until 4 O’clock. I’m not sure whether no one noticed or whether they were just too nice to say anything!! Perhaps I’ll find out later when I know them all better.

Tessa
New Oxjam Intern