Americorps and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
I've only been working at my job for a few weeks, and there is a lot more to figure out before I get in the swing of things I guess, but so far it has been great. I work downtown, "in the loop" for an organization called the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). ICIRR is a nonprofit that is basically a coalition of organizations who work all over Illinois in Immigrant and Refugee Communities. It's really cool, I've never worked for an organization this big before or this involved with politics. It's definitely new.
I'm actually working through Americorps as a Uniting America fellow. Our branch of ICIRR is focused on working in communities in Illinois where there is a high concentration of both native Illinois Americans and recent migrants, and the Uniting America program works towards creating a dialogue between these two groups and building a shared sense of community.
Like I said, I work at the main office downtown, where I'm in charge of social media and communication. Every week I upload posts from other fellows on the blog, look for ways to improve the website, look into volunteer data tracking software, publish a monthly newsletter highlighting things going on throughout the program, take photos and video, and edit both. It's really fun, but like I said I'm still learning a lot. Well anyway, I currently have a cold and I'm exhausted, so I will update more and add photos of my office later.