March 16, 2023, by Rebekah
My Placement with Mojatu Foundation
by Erin O’Donoghue, 3rd year Maths and Economics student.
My name’s Erin O’Donoghue and I’m a third year Maths and Economics student. I had a placement with the Mojatu Foundation during the autumn term of my second year. My initial role was as an Education Resource Manager, I worked within a team of three placement students with one of the staff members from Mojatu managing us. This was during Covid so it was all online, but I still managed to experience what a welcoming and supportive environment the Mojatu Foundation provides.
The original placement was hugely enjoyable, it was mostly research based: searching for online education resources (blogs, free courses, videos) to populate Mojatu Foundation’s learning platform Kutambua. The application was straightforward, I made sure to research the company well and include the details in my application. I also broke down the job description and made sure I evidenced my skills against everything they were looking for. My interview was online, and although I was nervous, it went well. Penny (the Chair of Mojatu Foundation) was easy to talk to and the interview was more like a conversation.
The placement was an amazing opportunity to gain some real-life work experience and helped me to develop skills that I knew I’d be able to utilise in my future career. It was great to connect with other students who were on the placement as well, I would have never interacted with them before.
I loved working at Mojatu so much that I offered to volunteer over the summer of my second year. During the summer, someone left the organisation and a vacancy for a Project Assistant became available. I was offered and gratefully accepted the position. I continued to work at Mojatu part-time alongside my third year of my degree. In December of my third year I opted to take a voluntary interruption of studies that would span the entire of 2022. I went home for Christmas and when I returned to Nottingham in January it was with the expectation that I would continue to work part-time for Mojatu and subsidise my living costs with another job – I had an interview with Asda lined up as a Sales Assistant. I went to speak to my manager to explain the situation and ask for a possible increase in my hours. I walked out of that meeting with an offer for a full-time position for the year!
As I’m due to resume my studies this coming January I’m reflecting on the past year and I think it’s fair to say that this past year has been one of the best experiences of my life. I have gained a multitude of different experiences, skills and met wonderful people, I was promoted to Training, Learning and Development Manager and I’m entering my final year of university with a massive load of experience!
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