Miranda Brown was told not to expect too much as a first-year student looking for a summer job, especially not to anticipate finding one in her field of study. But after prayer, research and preparing writing samples, she sent in her application for a storytelling internship at Tearfund Canada, a Christian nonprofit dedicated to ending poverty by partnering with churches worldwide.
“Being a storyteller for a Christian organization seemed like a dream, and both of my parents have worked in the Christian nonprofit sector so I was familiar with those kinds of jobs,” said Brown. To her surprise, she was invited to an interview.
“I did a practice interview at the Redeemer Career Centre because I’d never really had a formal interview before, and going to the Career Centre made me feel a lot more confident.”
Then one day, while sitting in her HUM-120 class, Brown got an email with a job offer from Tearfund.
“I was so shocked that I had to leave the class!”
Brown got to fill a variety of roles in her summer internship, including conducting journalistic interviews and writing articles, but her main job was to transform videos, documents, photos and other media forms into written story format to share with donors.
“The most memorable story for me is about a widow named Franscisca from Kenya, who through her local church learned farming techniques that totally transformed her life, multiplying her farm harvests by two to three times and let[ing] her afford to send her children to school.”
Some of the stories she wrote could be difficult or sad, but Brown found it an incredible experience to amplify the voices of people around the world. “It was really cool to write stories about these people and pray for them, and to see how this organization is helping them and how God is working in other places.”
My job reminds me that God can use people like me to help others across the world, and I love being able to use what I’m learning at school and apply it to my work, then take what I’m learning in work to invest back in school.
One of the highlights of Brown’s internship was when her manager helped connect her with the editors of the magazines Love is Moving and Faith Today. This new connection gave Brown the opportunity to write and publish two articles: one on loving others in a world that can feel hopelessly broken and the other on engaging young people in ministry.
While Brown was nervous about feeling disconnected in a job largely done remotely, she was surprised at how connected she still felt with her coworkers despite only meeting with them in person a few times.
“Tearfund does an incredible job with their interns making them feel welcome and giving them meaningful and impactful work to do. What we were doing mattered. We also did daily prayer calls online to start our work day where we’d share about our lives and pray about both personal things and world events. It was a special way to stay connected and bring God into the work I was doing and the story I was writing.”
Brown’s summer job led to the invitation to stay on part-time with Tearfund in the fall, and she is currently enjoying working on Tearfund’s Lent devotional.
“My job reminds me that God can use people like me to help others across the world, and I love being able to use what I’m learning at school and apply it to my work, then take what I’m learning in work to invest back in school. It’s a job directly related to both my majors and the opportunities I’m getting are showing me the different career paths I could take some day.”