My internship with Community Organized Relief Efforts occurred virtually, but the

organization is based in the Atlanta-Metro areas and other hotspots across the United States. I

completed this internship with three other Public Health interns: Sophie Hale, Stephanie Erndl,

and Lanier Justice. We all were interning for CORE, but were placed in different departments,

besides Sophie Hale and I. We were placed with the communications team with Teni-Ola

Ogunjobi, our site coordinator. We also worked alongside two other CORE employees, Ben

Searles and Aryn Backus. Ben was CORE’s photographer for the testing sites, creating media

content, and assisted with the weekly newsletter. Aryn, is a CDC employee assisting CORE with

health communications. As an intern, our duties consisted of a variety of tasks that assisted us in

valuable skill development that can be carried out into our futures.

One of the first projects assigned was our contact management assignment for

organizations across the Atlanta-Metro area. This is done by utilizing the CRM software,

Smartsheet, where we organized potential and existing partnership contact information. CRM

stands for Customer Relationship Management, and is a tool used by businesses to organize and

access recorded customer data. The information gathered consisted of phone numbers, email

addresses, location, main person of contact, and the website url. We searched and recorded data

from local governments, non-profit organizations, and local businesses. Organizing these

contacts into the CRM software is beneficial for CORE as well as the partnerships. It is a

resourceful centralized database where employees can keep track of partnerships and daily tasks.

With COVID-19 cases increasing in some states and regions more than others, we were assigned

to gather more information for locations with the highest cases. We conducted research to find

the top five counties in Georgia, top 10 states in the U.S., and the top SouthEast region states

with the highest COVID-19 cases. This data will be passed to CORE’s Strike Team, where they
will use this information to navigate where they should travel to. The Strike Team having this

information will increase testing capacity in these regions with a high number of cases.

The communications interns were also responsible for developing a cold-calling script for

contacting potential partnerships. We were assigned to pick from any type of partnership and

create a rough draft script that we could use. Sophie and I collaborated to create a mock script

and chose to take the local government route. This script was presented to the communications

team on Zoom to practice some role playing. This was an important project because developing

partnerships is crucial to the success of the organization. Partnership development begins with

the initial phone call, so it is critical that cold-calling script is developed and practiced.

Organizations must know who CORE is, what it stands for, the mission statements, as well as

what is expected out of a partnership. Our practice cold-call to the communications team went

well. We received some advice and criticism from the team members so we can make some edits

and corrections. The changes we had to make were not major, but valuable for an effective

partnership development. Something I wish had gone differently with this project was to have

the opportunity to make the official phone calls after practicing. Since there was no longer a need

for more partnership development, Teni-Ola said that the calls would not need to be made at this

time.

To work towards our health communication goals, Teni-Ola assigned us to conduct

individual research. Since Aryn Backus has experience with the CDC and health

communications, she guided us through this project. This research was done individually, but we

had frequent check-in’s with Aryn to update her on the progress. I used my skills from my

previous classes to do this research when finding reliable sources. Aryn gave us multiple sources

that she recommends to use, but the CDC website was labeled as the best for research. My skills
in this research also helped me when gathering data for the Strike Team, since I knew which

sources to use and trust.

Another task given to us was to create a legacy document. This document consists of a

detailed list of our roles and responsibilities, as well as the top 10 health promotion and

communication methods that we learned from research. The research added to the document is

the information we found the most valuable. The legacy document will be passed on to the next

round of communications team interns. It is important to be clear and concise on this document

so that the new interns can work effectively. Something I wish that was done differently was for

our research to be posted on one of the weekly newsletters and not just the legacy document.

Since CORE has not dealt with a pandemic like COVID-19 before, it is valuable for the

organization to know what was done so that it can be continued into the future.

Overall, the response and evaluations of my duties by my site coordinator were always

positive. Teni-Ola, along with the rest of the team were consistently supporting our work while

giving us advice on how to make sure we perform effectively. I developed new technological,

communication and contact management skills throughout my time with CORE. Although I

believe work may have been done effectively if the internship was on site, this was still a

learning experience that I am glad I had the opportunity to do.