This summer I (Billy) worked for Canadian Humanitarian as a business development intern. It was a good experience. I got to do a bunch of fun stuff like write grant proposals, research new methods of fundraising like mobile funding, participate in meetings to improve the website and overall marketing, and I got to go to Ethiopia with an expedition group. I'll do the Ethiopia blog post next. It was a pretty awesome summer!
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| Here's the office. It's on the bottom floor of this building. The window has their logo all over it which is AID spelled out in Morse Code. |
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| The other set of windows around the corner are cleaner looking, but are diced up by those pillars. |
I worked mostly with Lyndon, the Executive Director. He is a pretty cool guy and was fun to work with. He had a good sense of humor too, so once I was a little more comfortable there and had figured everyone out a little better, I sent Lyndon an email about how I was able to spiff up his profile picture for his bio section of the new website design. I don't know why, but I thought this was hilarious. I'm pretty sure he thought it was funny too.
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| We're obviously not going to use this photo for the website. |
I lived the first half, or little more than half of my time in Canada with the Northcotts. They are the family that started the organization and it was super nice that they let me stay with them. We had great dinners every night and lots of their family came to visit, so I got to meet a lot of Northcott relatives. It was fun working with Dick around the house too. We replaced the garage door opener and I helped him a bit with building a lattice structure in the backyard. He still has a lot of work to do though.
While I was there I was in the Medicine Hat 2nd Ward and everyone was very nice. I went to an Elder's Quorum golfing activity and realized that I really need to improve my game. I pretty much am the worst at golfing - well not the worst because I beat a couple of the guys I was golfing with. I'm pretty horrible though.
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| Here are a couple guys we were golfing with. |
Andrew Allen, who is a popular musician in Canada, is involved with the charity and went on an expedition to Ethiopia with the organization not too long ago. He came into the office for a day for a meeting, and he was also in the area doing house concerts, so we all went to one. He's pretty good! It was a fun concert and I thought the house concert was a pretty cool idea - he has people sign up to host a concert in their backyard with a minimum attendance requirement and charges people about $20 each to be there. It was pretty mellow which I am fine with.
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| Andrew Allen is on the right and the guy he had playing the concerts with him is named Cole. |
The last two weeks I lived in a condo that the Northcotts own which is also in Medicine Hat. It was really nice with a projector screen that came down from the ceiling, so I borrowed a bunch of movies and watched them there. Canadian Costco also had the most delicious watermelons that were actually from the US, so I ate tons of watermelon after work while watching movies. Perfect summer activities! Here are some pictures of the condo.
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| I hooked up my laptop with the HDMI cord and popped up that picture of my niece, Scarlett, to send to my family. |
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| The movie-watching chair |
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| Delicious watermelon!!! |
I drove back home to pack and then fly out for the Ethiopia trip toward the beginning of August. The drive was okay even though I was alone because I had some good books to listen to and I stopped in Salt Lake to have dinner at a Korean restaurant with my old mission friend, Evan Price and his family. They let me sleep at their house too. It was way fun catching up with them. I did really miss my friends and family and especially Caitlin while I was away in Canada, so it really sucked to leave again right away for Ethiopia after being home for less than two days. But the internship was great and I want to give a big thanks to the Northcotts and everyone at Canadian Humanitarian!
