It has been 5 years since we launched the DNR Studios internship program. Thanks to listeners like you we have been able to help dozens of interns grow and expand their work experience. Over the years our program has expanded to include homeless and at risk youth, area city college students and audio engineering trade school students. As we launch our annual Season of Giving 2021, we thought you might enjoy an update on our internship program.
The pandemic has been rough in so many ways and it created some incredible challenges for our internship program. How can you run an internship when you are no longer in the physical office space? Homeless shelters in NYC faced near impossible circumstances that put our Ali Forney interns on hold while they determined the best way to serve their clients. But the DNR Studios has been committed to keeping our internship program growing and thriving despite the challenges of the past 18 months.
When our offices closed in March of 2020 we had just completed a winter tech internship with Xiaoyan and were starting an internship with a brand new technical intern, Sumaiya, both from the City College of NY. Thankfully technology was on our side and we were able to continue her internship using zoom and other communication methods to stay in touch. We sent Sumaiya home with a DNR Studios laptop and she began the work on coding the Android version of our DNRcast App. She worked closely with Arafat and Derek and made a lot of progress before her internship ended earlier this year. Throughout most of 2020 and into 2021, we had at least an intern working remotely on various technical projects. While it has been disappointing not to have an Ali Forney intern we fully understood the specific challenges they were facing and have been patiently waiting for them to provide us with intern candidates.
In order to continue to provide DNR Studios as aa resource to people in need in 2021, we have been recruiting interns from other schools that have struggled to place interns due to the pandemic. We returned to the studio location in June and City College of NY asked us if we would continue accepting interns from a variety of their programs. We happily agreed and we took on three of their students over the summer. Aiden is our current tech intern and is working on programming the start/stop/resume functionality of the DNRcast App. Joselyn is a public relations major who has been focused on social media. Jonathan was a general office intern who helped with a wide range of tasks including hospitality management for DNR Travel. In addition, we took on two production interns from SAE a recording engineering school located in NYC. Due to many of the recording studios closing because of the pandemic these students were struggling to find an internship program as required to graduate. DNR Studios stepped in to help provide them with hands on audio production experience. Both Ajay and Rafi have been loving their time at DNR Studios and often brag to all their classmates about their internship. It has been decided that they have the best one!
The 2021 Summer Interns worked on a ton of new projects:
- Meet the Interns Show
- Twitch Tuesdays
- Great Smoky Weekend and other upcoming events
- DNR Studio Commercials for various shows
- Creating and Editing Best Of Shows
- Board Operating on OJNB & DNR
- DNRcast App development
- Creating jingles for on air games
- Writing/editing/producing Season of Giving Promos
As we move into the fall nearly all our summer interns have expanded their internships so they can continue with us. However, we fully expect to bring in a new batch of interns as soon as the Ali Forney Center has a few candidates for us. We have been told that they will be relaunching their LEAP program soon and we can’t wait.
As always, the DNR Studios Internship program is a passion project. The interns contribute to many of the shows on the network and they are a valuable part of DNR Studios. We love being able to teach these students and help them grow but we can’t do it without the help of listeners like you. During our Season of Giving we raise funds for future interns at the DNR Studios. Your donation makes all the difference in how much help we can provide. Without donations from previous years we wouldn’t have had the resources to send Sumaiya home with a laptop during the pandemic or the ability to host five interns over the summer who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to find an internship. We want to thank everyone who has donated and continues to donate to this internship program. You make it all possible! To make a donation please click here.
**All donations are tax deductible. On our donation page you can set up small monthly payments if you prefer that method of donating. If your employer does matching donations please submit to your employer. Romaine will happily assist if you need help with that.
