I just finished my first official week at Amnesty International USA. I work in the Media Relations department, which is where AIUSA analyzes the times that they are mentioned in the media, issues press releases about upcoming events, and schedules interviews and appearances for different representatives of Amnesty International to appear in the news. My first two days were mainly learning the more administrative tasks related to my job. I have the very time-consuming task of going through a database of all the Amnesty International mentions in the US-based media every day (there are hundreds to thousands depending on the news of the day) and compiling a report of which news organizations are mentioning AIUSA and in what way. While this task is tedious, I know that I will become very familiar with different American journalists and the current international news, which is a goal that I have for my time in DC. The other interns are very nice, but most of them work on the 5th floor (where most of the employees work) and media has its own smaller department on the 3rd floor so I don't see them very much. My supervisor is only a few years older than me and he is really nice and helpful. Unfortunately he is leaving in February for the Peace Corps.
The first few days were pretty overwhelming because of both the fact that I had just arrived in DC and I realized my job would involve constantly multi-tasking. While I need to compile the report every day, it is only distributed internally so it is not my first priority if other work comes up. I also answer the media line throughout the day, where I set up interviews between different news outlets and representatives for Amnesty. It is pretty cool to talk to representatives from places like the BBC and CNN International. My supervisor also gives me projects that take precedence over writing the report- the most interesting one for me personally was on Friday when I was working on writing up profiles of different journalists and their work for an Amnesty representative to use as talking points with them when he met them in Switzerland the next week at the World Economic Forum. I also got to go to a protest in front of the Indonesian embassy to urge them to free a student leader who was arrested for raising a flag during a peaceful protest. It was really interesting and I like when I can do diverse projects throughout the week.
One of the nights I stayed until 9 pm to write a transcription of an interview. It was a pretty long day but the people I was with were nice so I didn't really mind it. On Friday my boss took my supervisor and I out to breakfast to thank us for our work (half of the media office is currently in London for a conference so we had to do a lot of extra work that week). It was pretty nice.
The main issue that I was reading about this week was the protesting in Tunisia, and through constantly reading and sorting articles and going through the news I feel that I have a pretty thorough understanding of the issue. I have always been interested in international news but I know that this job will take my interest to a new level, because it is such a large part of what I do every day.
Perhaps the most rewarding part of the week was when a Sri Lankan man called and said that we have no idea how much help we're giving to Sri Lanka and to thank us for the good work. It was really encouraging to hear that, because Amnesty's mission is to defend human rights and that is exactly what he called to thank us for. I hope this week at work gets even better as I settle in more.
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