Hello, I’m Amanda! From July to September this year, I had the opportunity to intern with the Humanist Society as a Volunteer Engagement Intern and I’d like to share a bit about my internship experience in this post.
The internship started out with various meetings with Exco members to learn more about the society’s background and its current work, and especially about how its functions are currently organised into Working Groups (WGs).
The Exco members that I met were each managers of particular WGs. It was fascinating to hear about some of the unique work of HSS, like the Humanist Cafe which aims to collate individual stories and give the non-religious a stronger voice in the Singapore story, and the Alliances WG that connects with other organisations, across sectors and religions, to communicate humanists’ viewpoints to the wider society.
Other WGs like IT & Marketing might be found more commonly, perhaps showing how crucial they are for any organisation’s functioning, and they indeed serve as a backbone for much of HSS’ work too.
I ramble — in all, I gained a deeper understanding of the society’s operations, which would be needed for my subsequent communications with volunteers!
If you filled in our volunteer sign-up form anytime in the last four years, you might have received an email from me — this was part of the next segment of my internship where I reached out to all existing volunteers in HSS’ database. The emails introduced the new WG structure of volunteering, given the drop in event-based volunteering opportunities due to Covid-19.
I (and the Exco) were happy to see some response from interested individuals, even a few who had signed up back in 2017! I assisted with the scheduling of meetings between new volunteers and Exco members, to get to know the volunteers and find suitable roles where they could contribute to the society.
Along the way, I got to join events like the Humanist Cafe and Peer Support Group in July, and the distribution of food packs to Happy People Helping People’s beneficiaries in September (above).
Besides gaining insight into a participant’s experience of HSS activities, I could also simply meet humanists from different walks of life and hear about their thoughts and experiences, opening my mind to new perspectives.
The last segment of my internship involved improving HSS’ system of managing volunteers, supervised by HSS Webmaster Dan Thio. It was wonderful to hear from Shamima Rafi, former vice-president of HSS, about her approach to managing volunteers in her current role at AWARE.
Based on her suggestions, I outlined the steps of a potential volunteer engagement process that HSS could follow, from induction to withdrawal, working with Dan to identify gaps in this process that had yet to be filled. This led to some reorganising of webpages and addition of content to guide volunteers or anyone else looking to contribute to the humanist community.
I also experimented with a web management tool that might help us manage volunteer projects more effectively, but there remains more to be done in terms of implementing it in practice.
I took on this internship part-time alongside another internship that I had committed to earlier and I am incredibly thankful to the Exco for their patience in accommodating me. In particular, Jianyue and Dan have always been supportive while also pushing me to do my best.
I wish I could leave my role saying no stone (of volunteer engagement) has been left unturned, but that is unfortunately not the case, and there remains more to be done in terms of managing volunteers at HSS and reaching out to new ones.
But with the friendliness I’ve been met with during this internship, I’m happy to continue helping out on a volunteer basis myself, perhaps until a new Volunteer Engagement Intern rolls in to pick up the job. I am very grateful to have had this experience!
