Last semester, I applied to the Tufts CMS Winternship Program, which is cosponsored by Career Services and the Communications & Media Studies department and pairs up students with media professionals in the LA, Boston and NYC areas. I was delighted to find out that I had been assigned to work at Trickle Up in NYC for a week from January 11th - 15th.
This extraordinary nonprofit empowers people living on less than $1 a day to take the first steps out of poverty by providing them with business training, seed capital to launch or expand a business, and savings support to build a better quality of life for themselves and their families. I met Bill Abrams, the president of Trickle Up (and a Tufts alumnus), early Monday morning, and then proceeded to follow him from meeting to meeting until around Thursday evening. It was a little overwhelming at first, but I very much appreciated the opportunity to sit in on these meetings because it gave me the chance to meet a lot of different people, and to become acquainted with various departments within the company. During the week, I attended meetings devoted to everything from event planning to budgeting to reaching out to donors. I was even able to watch Mr. Abrams get interviewed about the benefits of microfinancing by NY1, a popular 24 hour web news channel.

