I chose Center for Child Protection, because it offered me a chance to work with an organization with a great cause–to bring help, hope, and healing to children who have been abused. The Center for Child Protection is the first stop for children who are victims of sexual and physical abuse and for children who have witnessed a violent crime. Children are referred to the Center by law enforcement and each child is brought to the Center by a caregiver for a recorded forensic interview, forensic medical exam, counseling, and crisis intervention. All services provided by the Center for Child Protection are free, which puts this organization in the category of a non-profit organization. The Center for Child Protection was founded in 1989 as a result of the deaths of three small children in Austin. The community came to a realization that it needed to do a better job of helping children who were victims of abuse and or neglect. The Center was established to bring together the agencies that serve these children.
The Center for Child Protection gave me a chance to learn the “behind the scenes” of the development process and gain experience in direct mailing, donor acknowledgments, donor request letters, multiple software programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Quark, and Razors Edge. In addition, it gave me experience in marketing. This also answered my second question of the type of organization I not only wanted to intern at, but where I wanted to work after graduation, a non-profit agency. I learned what I have to offer a non-profit is not only my writing skills, but also an anthropological point of view that works well within a Development Department. It works well in that I can write a letter that can be geared towards one culture or multiple cultures for the purpose of bringing cultures together for a worthy cause, in this case Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention.