By Nikki Kuiken, Grade 12
I did my placement at Compassion Canada which is a non-profit organization that strives to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. I chose it because I am very passionate about ending poverty all over the world and I heard about Compassion through Church and school.
At first I was very nervous about starting my placement because there were so many new people I was going to meet and new things I was going to learn. After just the first week I had already come to love the work that Compassion does and I met some incredible people.
For the first three weeks I pulled out social media content and gave feedback on some of their educational resources they have. I was also given the opportunity to create videos and posts for social media. I used Canva to make posts and got to put together tik tok videos as well as video blog reflections.
I loved that I was able to make connections with some incredible people. I got to sit in on some meetings there and I learned about some of the jobs other people do at Compassion. I loved hearing people talk about what they do at Compassion and a little bit of their story.
The biggest challenge for me was that my whole placement was online and done virtually. I was never able to go to the main office or meet people from Compassion in real life. I still had an incredible experience doing it all online, but it definitely was a barrier.
I had an amazing experience at Compassion and I think doing a co-op is a fantastic opportunity that everyone should take advantage of. In the future I would love to work with people living in poverty and homelessness. This placement has made me realize how passionate I am about ending poverty everywhere.