This past week I started an internship at The Independent Health Foundation. In just two days, I already feel like I’ve been a part of the team for months. The Independent Health Foundation works with the members of the community to help support a healthy community.  It receives support through sponsorships, donations and fundraising events, which become assets to help keep the organization up and running.

The Independent Health Foundation created two major programs, Healthy Options and Fitness For Kids Challenge as a means of connecting with our community and raising awareness of the importance of their health. Healthy Options works with local restaurants and their menus to offer customers healthy eating options at some of their favorite food places. Fitness For Kids Challenge works with kids grades 2-5 to help increase their physical activity and healthy eating choices. From October to May the schools work to complete activity and nutrition challenges in hopes of winning prizes.

As an intern at the Independent Health Foundation I will be working with the team on these two programs. I will be maintaining some of their social media sites, writing for their blogs, and helping run their events. Currently, the Foundation has a Twitter for their Healthy Options program, and a Facebook. After talking with some of the staff members, I thought it would be beneficial to create an Instagram for the Foundation to help connect with the community. I have not yet received an “okay” from the directors of the group to create an account, so I spent a lot of my time on Friday researching and putting together an outline. In this outline I showed the benefits and ways I believe we can flourish through Instagram. I plan on conducting a meeting on Monday, and try to persuade the members of the team that Instagram is a great “fit” and can really benefit the Foundation.

I think as an intern, starting up a social media account that I monitor and maintain would be a great experience. On Thursday of this upcoming week, Healthy Options is holding an event at the UB Center of the Arts called “Serving Up Success.” At this event, local restaurants, breweries and wineries come together to show the community what healthy and tasty options they have to offer. There will also be music, prizes and fun! I will be helping out at the event, and will be interviewing the consumers and restaurants about the event. With the interviews, I plan to write up a post for the Foundation’s blog. I will also be taking pictures of the event that I hope to be able to post!

I can’t wait to go back next week, and am really looking forward to what the rest of the semester at The Independent Health Foundation has to offer.