My name is Brittany Ng and I will be going into my third year at Â鶹Çø in fall 2020. My home is currently in St. Catharines, Ontario – however, I have lived in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong throughout the majority of my life. I attended many international schools growing up which is what lead me to pursue a major in International Development Studies, with a minor in Management.
After getting the opportunity to intern at a start-up, grassroots non-profit organization last summer, I had learned a lot and gained experience that I wanted to continue to build upon. Thus, I wanted to, again, find a small business that I knew I could help as well as apply my knowledge from my past year of schooling and studies.
Established in 1997, CCEP is an organization dedicated to furthering the education of overseas students in the Chinese language in a Canadian context. ​Through a combined effort of Canadian educators, Chinese scholars, and experienced language instructors, as well as inputs from parents and students, they have specifically designed a curriculum and textbooks that achieves this. By placing an interest on the Canadian culture as the main factor in the choice of topics, they are able to enhance student and teacher engagement and captivate the readers.
My learning objectives for the internship included:
- Leveraging my academic learnings in marketing and accounting in a real-life organization, to increase the distribution and profitability of a small organization. Explore and improve social media and digital channels to reach out to new audiences.
- Undertake research to understand the strengths of CCEP to help develop a proposal to ensure the sustainability and growth of the organization in future, including new digital and mobile options.
- Improve the manual inventory and accounting system and introduce automated platforms for efficient and accuracy.
As an intern, I was responsible for looking for areas of improvement in business development, marketing and finance. In terms of marketing, I undertook research to first understand the organization and social trends over the past few years, and then using this analysis I prepared a proposal for CCEP on how to expand the client base. I wrote a research report which justified the growth of CCEP in certain regions over others by focusing on demographics as well as psychographics in order to achieve the most solid growth. Out of all the schools I reached out to based on my proposal, there was a 50% response rate – which was encouraging considering that schools were closed due to COVID-19 and also as summer was nearing. I created a social media presence as well as a web page to help the target audience to increase their awareness of the CCEP curriculum/offerings through these strategies. In terms of finance, I was able to transfer information and streamline the inventory management with an online accounting platform to achieve real time information management. During the process of the data conversion and transfer from the manual tracking system to the online tracking system, I identified data errors that were not seen before and helped to rectify them. Lastly, in the time of COVID-19, many companies are looking to switch/add online versions of products. I was able to convert textbooks to a PDF system to enable expansion to online/digital learning channels should CCEP choose to extend the learning to a new channel. For the workbooks, I had also suggested for CCEP to consider creating an interactive app to allow students to practice writing characters and study on a mobile platform.
Despite COVID-19 and having to work remotely, there were many highlights of my internship with CCEP, particularly the satisfaction of once again helping a small company see the many opportunities it could seize. I was able to see the results of my responsibilities firsthand in terms of implementation and outcomes (i.e. websites and digital accounting system), and I was able to be involved and lead in many aspects of the organisation.
Also, because of COVID-19 there were many webinars online which allowed me to leverage on resources right from home to expand my knowledge and network while working with CCEP. I was able to attend many webinars that were focused around my internship as well as webinars for working remotely.
My time at CCEP has been sometimes challenging with COVID-19. Among the challenges was staying focused in a house with siblings and parents, which is never totally quiet or peaceful (along with staying in comfy clothes all day). However, I established a daily routine, set boundaries with my family, and set out written tasks for the week and planned out a scheduled day accordingly.
The impact that this internship had on my university experience was truly important. It has helped me realize how applicable the things we are learning in the classroom are to the real world. It has given me a context to continue to build on the educational experiences I received over the course of my Â鶹Çø career so far. The experience and lessons learned from CCEP have put me in a direction that I want to continue going on – it has helped me to understand what I might want to do with my degree once I graduate.
I am not receiving academic credit for this internship; however, I am receiving funding. Initially, funds would have covered rent, transportation, food, and utilities. However, due to COVID-19, it helped with food, transportation to get home, enrolment with webinars and certifications, as well as going towards my tuition for next semester as a result from tighter budget restrictions. These funds will not only help in the present, but also assist me in continuing my education and learning experience. I am very grateful to Dr. Andre King Wi Tan for the Andre King Wi Tan Externship Award in funding my Internship Award.
