Like working for International Rescue?

Posted by jossc — 16 November 2009 at 1:22pm - Comments
Toby Osmond

Our latest recruit Toby reflects on life as an intern here at Canonbury Villas...

Hello people! At the mo I'm interning for Greenpeace UK at their head office in London, which is fun. Before this I was volunteering on various projects and in different departments in the office.

The difference between interning and volunteering is that an internship offers more of a set role with in-depth work and projects that you can get your teeth stuck in to, whereas general volunteer work can vary daily - depending on what work needs doing in the office. Interning requires a commitment from both the individual and the organisation to basically help each other achieve their goals, be it the organisation's campaign goals or the individual's desire to gain experience in a certain field.

Right now I'm working in the policy and solutions department as a research assistant. This divides approximately 50-50 between research work and (less interesting) admin type work, though actually that’s still quite absorbing - it's mainly keeping up with media hits and following the goings on in parliament.

It's all very interesting if that's kind of thing that you’re in to. Which, coincidently, I am! This role has been particularly ideal for me as I did a politics degree but then decided I wanted to get in to environmental work because, without bigging myself up too much, I wanted to save the world. Oh yeah.

I first started working for Greenpeace about a year ago, as an intern for the global warming team in their Washington DC office (Baltimore Orioles are better than the Washington Nats). Since then I've volunteered in the London office on and off with a number of departments and on differing projects, and was then lucky enough to get this internship as a research assistant. I've chosen to work for Greenpeace consistently because I feel they are the best big organisation when it comes to, basically, saving the world. It's kind of like working for International Rescue. Oh, and the food is yummy.

About Joss

Bass player and backing vox in the four piece beat combo that is the UK Greenpeace Web Experience. In my 6 years here I've worked on almost every campaign and been fascinated by them all to varying degrees. Just now I'm working on Peace and Oceans - which means getting rid of our Trident nuclear weapons system and creating large marine reserves so that marine life can get some protection from overfishing.

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