Student Assistant

Can Do Kids International, El Paso IL (2015 - 2019)

Nonprofit Work

Can Do Kids International is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization in the USA and an official NGO in Kenya. As the assistant to the Executive Director, my main responsibilities were producing promotional material and helping communicate the mission and work of the organization.   

Background

My parents started a nonprofit called Can Do Kids (CDK) in 2007. What initially started as a mid-week kids club became a nonprofit that aimed to serve people and their basic needs. This change came about after my family was invited to Kenya to take place in the commissioning of a water system that was donated by my grandpa. Since that trip, Can Do Kids International has been serving public schools and communities in Kenya by providing safe water, school necessities, education, and encouragement. Though I’ve done mostly volunteer work with CDK, I would work and provide my services when needed. I worked more officially and regularly the summer after my freshman year of college (2018). In this part of my portfolio, I’d like to showcase what I accomplished that summer.

Working with the Kenyan Embassy

Video for the Kenyan Ambassador

My biggest project was creating a video to communicate what Can Do Kids International is all about to the Kenyan Ambassador in Washington DC. After receiving the video, the ambassador invited us to meet with him. In December, I was able to be a part of that meeting and Can Do Kids International received the ambassador’s endorsement. Because of this endorsement, Can Do Kids has received several grants and individual contributions that have brought in over $270,000.00 for water systems in rural Kenya. These systems have helped and continue to help over 18,000 Kenyans every year!

Meeting the Ambassador

Here’s a photo of our meeting with the ambassador. It was great being able to sit in on this meeting and be a part of this collaborative effort to provide Kenyans with safe water.

Other Projects

  • Website

    I used Squarespace to design the official Can Do Kids International website. This included compiling media, ideas, and content to build the website.

  • Fundraising

    I worked with the band director of a local high school to create a fundraising campaign. This included making a promotional video and photos and creating a GoFundMe. This project raised enough for a water system that supplies a primary and secondary school (more than 700 students) with safe water.

  • Corn

    I spent two summers in high school fundraising with “Corn for a Cause.” A local farmer let us pick and sell his sweet corn and use all of the profits for water systems in Kenya. I helped organize volunteers and picked and sold the corn a few days a week. This project raised over $4,000.00.

Creative Assistant

Heirloom Photography, El Paso IL (2009 - 2017)

Professional Photography

Heirloom is my parents’ photography business. My position at Heirloom included a wide range of responsibilities pertaining to the production and processing of photos and videos. I started working for them in 2009 and as a middle schooler, I was doing work that their college-aged employees did.

Photo Restoration

My favorite part of working for Heirloom is photo restoration. My parents will still give me photos to restore when I’m not too busy. One important function of Heirloom is creating funeral DVDs that showcase the lives that people lived. The most time-extensive part of making a DVD is restoring about forty photos with photoshop. As a creative person, restoring these photos is quite fun and I’ve gotten pretty good at it too!

See the photos below to get a taste of the restoration that I have done. Though it can sometimes take thirty minutes or more, the final product is always worth the time and effort. And in my time spent messing around with photoshop, I have been able to find new ways of doing things that improve efficiency and quality.

Other Responsibilities

  • Sports Shoots

    I have been involved with all parts of sports shoots. This includes promoting the shoots, taking order forms and checking people in, assisting the photographer, photographing, editing, entering data in FileMaker Pro, and ordering packages.

  • Professional Shoots

    These shoots include photographing goods, houses, families, seniors, and companies. I typically would assist the photographer and edit the photos.

  • DVDs

    Making a DVD includes communicating with the funeral home, restoring about forty photos, making a video (in the early days this meant putting Ken Burns on every photo manually), creating a DVD, burning the DVD, creating a case, and delivering to the funeral home within 48 hours.

Lessons Learned at Heirloom

Working for my parents and seeing all sides of this business has taught me so much. The biggest thing I’ve taken out of working for Heirloom is becoming an exceptionally hard worker. I realized and saw that every minute I wasted while I was on the clock hurt my parents and family. And I saw that when I worked as efficiently and well as possible, it helped me and the business. That manifested in finding new ways to do things and experimenting with tedious things like data entry to find the most efficient way to enter data.

Another lesson I learned at Heirloom (and a lesson that was reinforced by being a section leader in the Marching Illini) was that sometimes you can’t make everyone happy. As a people pleaser, this can be disappointing and discouraging, but it does not mean that you can’t try your best and change the way you do things to serve your customer (or section).

I have taken the lessons I learned at Heirloom into my other jobs. I want to be the best worker I can be. If that means coming in during spring break to run experiments for fun, not using my phone while I’m working, or trying to maximize what I’m able get done while I’m on the clock, I’ll do it.