Tierra Madre Horse Sanctuary: Personal Narrative Analysis

My 12-week internship at Tierra Madre Horse Sanctuary was almost exactly what I expected from this course. After switching to the Non-Profit Leadership and Management degree I was immediately intimidated by the thought of my final semester being nothing but internship work, but it turned out to be not as scary I as thought it would. Working the non-profit field has its own set of challenges and I believe that horse rescue has an even deeper set of challenges. Tierra Madre is a special kind of rescue, which is why we call ourselves a ‘sanctuary’. All of the animals that come through our gates call Tierra Madre a forever home. This means we have to feed, care, and clean up after what is now 32 horses. We have to use our ability to tug at people’s heartstrings to raise money for our horses since we do not have any kind of revenue from adoptions or services. Throughout my years at ASU, I had volunteered at many …show more content…
I got experience rewriting waivers and developing volunteer job descriptions and recruiting volunteers. I received a little bit of experience doing an inventory of feed and tracking monthly spending. For public relations, I got some experience talking to the public while distributing flyers, making brochures, working in social media (Facebook, twitter, and Instagram), and email communication. I lead the planning on a fundraiser and a project team for a group of volunteers. I obviously got a ton of Maintenance Operations experience while working on the upkeep and improvement of the facility. I received a little bit of experience in planning emergency policy and plans, particularly in fire safety.
Event planning was a large part of my internship that I didn’t truly enjoy. The process is long and exhausting, without a lot of help it can be impossible. This proved true in my fundraiser fail. I did not get the help I needed in time and it proved to be too much for one person to