How Mission Edge Helped This Biotech Company Give Back to the Community
When Illumina came to Mission Edge three years ago, they wanted to facilitate a volunteer project that engaged an important cohort: interns.
Their goal was to help early-stage professionals understand that community engagement is an integral part of working at Illumina.
Now, for the third year in a row working with the biotechnology company, we’re creating a virtual volunteer project for Illumina’s summer interns.
This virtual volunteer program was birthed during the pandemic by an Illumina CSR team member, and brought to light with the facilitation and program management by the Mission Edge CSR team.
This year’s program consisted of 50+ interns being split into two cohorts who were able to participate and make an impact in the community.
Interns were grouped into teams and paired with one of eight nonprofits to tackle a curated project of the nonprofits choosing.
Mitzy Makes It, an organization on a mission to inspire young girls to pursue STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics) was one of those nonprofits.
How this CSR program made a difference for Mitzy Makes It
A team of seven interns, including one Illumina employee mentor, from various disciplines were tasked with creating social media content with the goal of introducing kids and parents to fun STEAM careers and concepts in an engaging way.
The deliverables for the Mitzy Makes It team were to make Tik Tok videos highlighting careers in STEAM, create images highlighting a different career in each STEAM field, and images introducing new topics, terms, quotes or activities for each subject area in STEAM.
As the intern team was busy exercising their creativity and building engaging content for the organization, Mitzy Makes It Founder, Shazzy Angulo, was able to focus her time on creating lesson plans and free STEAM resources for teachers and parents. Shazzy and the Mitzy Makes It intern team shared their project and impact at the Illumina Volunteer Networking Mixer. Shazzy expressed her appreciation with the Mission Edge virtual volunteer program:
“Being a small organization can be stressful and overwhelming at times, between managing the mission of the org, marketing materials and connecting with the community. Having so many extra pairs of hands (that are all so bright and pleasant!) to help push some of the pending initiatives forward is really amazing and helpful!”
As we facilitate the virtual volunteer program, one of our goals for the interns is to enrich their internship experience with Illumina.
Interns were able to utilize skills they don’t normally have the opportunity to exercise in their day-to-day internship, as well as make connections with interns in different departments. One intern on the Mitzy Makes It team shared:
“It is very important to keep that in mind that creating this content is not just about advocating STEAM subjects. It is more than that. These young individuals are future leaders, future innovators, future investors. It is important to nurture their curiosity and fuel their passion for learning. I hope the pursuit of knowledge in STEAM subjects for all kids will be filled with excitement, inspiration, and a lifelong passion for learning.”
The virtual volunteer project allows for the interns to connect with their community, as well as be an active contributor in its improvement.
Mitzy Makes It and all of our nonprofit partners were able to leverage the skills from undergraduate and graduate students at Illumina to ultimately propel their missions forward.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can partner with your team to initiate a volunteer or giving program that truly makes a difference, we’d love to chat!
