This summer has been a very busy time with some incredible experiences. I have had the wonderful opportunity to do my internship at the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce and have my mentor be Holly Ferguson. She has given me so much advice and opportunities to gain experience. Through the Holyoke Chamber, I worked on several projects which consisted of the new ice cream truck, community calendar, fair booth, and creating a brand new website for the chamber. My favorite project was doing the ice cream truck. Every Monday the Holyoke Chamber would have Root Beer Float Monday and the location would be at different businesses that are a member of the Chamber. Out of these locations, my two favorites would be Jake’s Feed and BarkWell.
The community calendar that I worked on is a joint project put together by the school district and Holyoke Chamber. The school district would work on include all school activities while Holyoke Chamber would put together a list of local community activities. To put this list together I called different organizations and businesses to see if they would like to have the same day of the week for their event or if they would like to make any changes. It was difficult to get a hold of some organizations or businesses. Several were unsure due to COVID-19 and decided to exclude their event from the calendar. Outside of contacting people about events, I worked on contacting different organizations and businesses if they would like to keep the same ad as they had in the previous year. The ads were probably the easiest part of this project.
My last two big projects were the fair booth and the website. The fair booth was put together in roughly a week and was a huge success. To get the booth to meet all the regulations it took several days of deep cleaning. From July 23rd – 25th, the booth was operational and in working function. Our biggest hit seller was our funnel cakes. To be honest funnel cakes are one of the best aspects of fair food but I never realized how difficult they could be to make especially with such a high demand for them.
The last project was working on the website and creating one that is user friendly for current or potential perspective users. Holyoke Chamber’s old website had many issues that needed to be fixed but the platform they were using was different and had poor quality. I was able to find a way to create a website that would not cost the Holyoke Chamber any fees and would create the look that they need to be able to meet the needs of their members. It was a project that took me the entire summer to complete but I am grateful that I created a platform that will be able to help the chamber grow as an organization.
Throughout this summer I have worked hard on learning to expand my horizons and take away as much I can from this internship. The three goals that I set up early on in this internship I have worked on achieving. Out of the three, the one that I am excited about achieving is the newly designed website. I am so excited for the Holyoke Chamber to have a new platform to communicate with its members. My second goal was to bring forth new ideas with little hesitation. Although I did not achieve this goal fully I do feel that I have had a huge improvement and am grateful to see the progress. The last goal that I had was to expand my connections by meeting different Chamber Members. This goal was one that I did not achieve but I had the opportunity to meet so many different people both within the Holyoke Chamber and the community and I think that is an achievement in its own way.
I am truly grateful for being able to have this internship and see the impact it has had on my experiences. The community here in Holyoke is such an amazing place and I loved helping it during a difficult year especially after everything the community has done for me and my family over the years. I want to say thank you so much to Holly Ferguson who is one of the most incredible mentors I could have had and am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with her.
