Dear John,
My name is Daniela Chaparro, and I am the development associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). It was thanks to the Sally Yudelman Internship Program that I was able to explore opportunities at WOLA as a young professional. I started at WOLA in the fall semester of 2019 as an intern with the communications team. I was given the opportunity to work on a variety of projects and hone my communication skills by running the intern Twitter page, tracking press hits, creating graphics, and supporting translation and writing projects. Leaving the internship, I realized that as a Venezuelan-American who grew up concerned with human rights issues, the relationship between communications and the human rights world has always been of great interest to me. I never saw a clear path for how those two worlds could meet until I was able to experience it first-hand while interning at WOLA.
When COVID-19 became a global pandemic in March 2020, I was in search of a job. In April of that year, my previous intern supervisor at WOLA called to see if I would be interested in completing a second internship. I was excited to explore the ways in which this new semester would educate and challenge me in a virtual work setting. During my second internship I had the privilege of working on research for the Con Lideres Hay Paz campaign, which became a successful project that highlights a variety of human rights abuses towards social justice activists in Colombia and the incredible ways they are overcoming them.
When my second internship came to an end the development team asked me to join them as a part-time development assistant while they prepared for WOLA’s first virtual gala. I tracked registrations, publicized the gala on a variety of listservs, and provided translation support for gala-related content.
In January 2021, WOLA asked me to become the full-time development assistant. I happily accepted!
I am grateful to WOLA for the opportunity to intern– now work– at such an inspiring organization that has a real impact on Latin America. I am also grateful to our loyal donors. Their support of WOLA helped provide me with opportunity after opportunity. I hope my trajectory with WOLA shows exactly how important support for our internship program is and the impact it has on young people. The internship program is a crucial part of how WOLA develops future generations of advocates and arms them with the necessary skills to champion human rights and social justice work over the course of their careers. I ask that you please contribute to WOLA’s internship program today.
Warmly,
