Name: Aliya Stubenbord
Class Year: 2024
Major: International Studies
Hometown: Forest Hills, NY
Internship Organization: Migration Resource Center
Job Title: Social Media Intern
Location: Remote
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
Currently, I am working as a social media intern at Migration Resource Center. Migration Resource Center is a non-Profit aiming to create strong neighborhoods by resolving immigration issues with affordable legal services and free educational workshops. I have been making social media posts since June about holidays, resources, and services on Facebook and Instagram. I have completed a bunch of research about community engagement through these posts. Recently, a new intern joined the social media team. This intern and I work together to create posts. I create posts in English and the other intern makes them in Spanish. We are trying to increase our audience by making our pages accessible. Even though my internship is remote, I have still been able to connect with the NYC immigrant community through social media accounts. From people commenting as well as private messaging the account, I have referred many people to the organization's resources. Additionally, from working on the social media pages, I have worked on a few blog posts. I covered issues surrounding the immigrant community such as housing and the pandemic.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied to this internship because social media is a way of communicating a message among various communities. I enjoy building positive relationships and being a part of a team that serves underrepresented groups is something very important to me. As an international studies major and a visual studies minor, this position would intersect both of my interests. Through my major I have learned about the study of relationships among people from different communities. I wanted to be able to spread a message for an organization that helps stabilize families and build strong communities by resolving immigration issues.
Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?
There have been many skills that I have learned from overseeing Migration Resource Center’s branding. I have learned more about how to design posts using apps such as Canva, Illustrator, Photoshop, and more. These skills are important to me because communications/marketing/public relations is something that interests me as a career. I enjoy being creative and I would like to leave an impact on a viewer and this opportunity presents that. Throughout my internship I have been looking and learning more and more about social media analytics. I am able to see how many people have looked at the page. From there, I can see the age, gender, and geographical areas that the account and each post have reached. It is important to understand your primary audience and then try to expand that audience.
What is most rewarding about your internship? Was this internship what you expected it to be?
The most rewarding part of my internship has been learning more about how social media and graphic design can have an impact on people. I wanted to learn more about graphic design and this has been a fantastic experience to enhance my skills as well as learn more techniques that will visually please audiences. This internship is what I expected. I knew that this would be an experience for me to learn and gain more experience. I am happy to be a part of this team doing something that intersects both of my interests.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.