St. Mary’s Community Development Corporation is welcoming two new interns for the upcoming academic year. With the help of the incoming interns, Taylor Smith, executive director of St. Mary’s CDC, expects the extra help will increase the CDC’s organizational capacity. By bringing on the interns, Taylor is excited to assist future professionals in gaining real-world experience while working for the CDC. “It was just me for so long, and when Carla joined the team in May it opened up many new doors for us to expand our efforts. The two interns will be able to build tangible skills to utilize in their future careers, all while supporting the many projects and programs we hold under our umbrella,” Taylor explained.
Intern Mahree Annan is a sophomore at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying political science and public policy. They joined the team as the Project Management Intern with the goal of helping support the staff with ongoing CDC programs and projects. When asked about what community involvement meant to them, Mahree responded saying, “community involvement relieves the pressure and captivity of institutional constraints to remind us, we all can find common ground in finding a common purpose.” Being a part of the CDC, Mahree is most eager to expand youth-engagement through developing programs to growthing accessibility to public art and environmental education in our community. “I plan to collectively work with the CDC team to develop and manage projects that fuel community advancement through beautification and sustainability,” they expressed.
Other than working with the CDC, Mahree has worked with the Southern Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club as a Secretary and lobbyist, volunteered at the Calvert Marine Museum as an Exhibit Interpreter and Youth Advisory Council as a Chair, and spearheaded grassroots initiatives in high school that led to expanding students involvement and education of social and environmental injustice of our community. Associated with the college, Mahree is developing the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Public Art Collective (SMCM PAC) on-campus that aims to reimagine the public space and bring people together through creative expression. In this effort, Mahree aims to strengthen community interconnectivity between college students and the community, bringing people together by using art and public space making as a catalyst for social and environmental justice, and sustainable development.
Intern Emily Vance is a junior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English and Spanish. Joining the team as the Community Engagement Intern, she will spend her time enveloped in community outreach and journalistic work within the community. Working with St. Mary’s CDC, Emily is most anticipating being able to aid the CDC in their mission through outreach efforts in terms of extensive communication with the community. “I’m very excited to actually go out into the community and get to be really involved with the members on another level, it’s always nice to get to know exactly who your cause is for” she expressed when asked about what she was most looking forward to with her time here.
Through her previous experiences with Marketing and Communications at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Emily has been involved in writing up matters that connect the community with the college. She has also worked with nonprofits before, providing her with a basic understanding of how a nonprofit runs and what it means to support a mission. As a new member of the community Emily has stated how she “wanted to get more involved with the community. I moved down here officially and started working at a business in Lexington Park and knew I wanted to become an included, dedicated, and true member of the community.”
With all that is in store for the upcoming academic year, we are excited to welcome them to the team.
