As Harmony Place got selected for the Canada Summer Jobs Program, which is a program offering summer positions to Canadian citizens ages 15-30, we started looking for a Digital Marketing Specialist to help us in our initiatives to bring more awareness to the organization  💻

Enter Nirzari, an aspiring digital marketer hungry to learn, driven by curiosity and determination of both the field itself and bringing exposure to Harmony Place, which both acted as her motivation to contribute as much as she could in these two months. 💪

She has worked on numerous tasks in her time here such as:

• A new strategic plan including creating a vision and revamping the mission so it’s more recognizable,
• Some ad hoc tasks such as going to outings and activities with our fellow participants and staff to take pictures/videos for digital tactics and developing them into engaging reels for socials,
• Created emails from scratch through Mailchimp,
• Worked on blogs for our website, and
• Even make an ongoing content calendar with new content pillars which incorporates frequency of when we post each one. This also required research for special disability months, days, occasions that are relevant. This also needed sufficient internal research about Harmony Place in general and their mission, what they do, and external research for blogs.

Nirzari learnt a lot including:

• video editing,
• going to different events for taking pictures and videos,
• researching,
• creating a content calendar and email from scratch,
• updated her skills in content writing and storytelling, and developing a solid strategy with emotional storytelling; eg. giving adults with disabilities a sense of belonging. 💜💚🩶

She is proud of each one of these accomplishments as it all added to her skillset and professional foundation, and what she is most proud of is the ability to edit videos intentionally, keeping in mind the company, and awakening her critical thinking skills to do that. She gained skills in enhancing her creativity and her attention to detail, and everything that goes on behind the scenes to make posts look polished. When her reels were posted, she was so happy because she updated her creative skills. 💖

She always does say – do not underestimate a contract term even if it is only for the summer. You might end up gaining new skills and updating our current ones for your career; your future self will probably thank you. This is why Canada Summer Jobs in general is beneficial, especially in this job market.

It can also help give you exposure to new industries, different roles that you might have overlooked, and it can even grow your network. Through this program, you might find out what you’re looking for, where you want to head in your career, and what really matters to you.

Through this program, Nirzari now can grow her portfolio with a diversity of digital marketing techniques. Though she loves social media, she really  wanted to start leveraging her creativity through other digital methods like content writing, and CSJ was the catalyst that gave her that opportunity. 👩‍🏫✍️

To add, she is was so happy to meet so much of our staff and get acquainted with them, and the adults with disabilities who attend Harmony Place. She gained more knowledge about the different types of disabilities and what they do. This experience has also encouraged more her to have more empathy and compassion, especially to those who don’t have as much functionality. She also was grateful to the staff and her manager, Kathleen, for being so encouraging, friendly, helpful, and welcoming her with grace to the company.

She truly is so thankful for this role, how much it taught her about herself, the developmental sector, and digital marketing. Thanks to this role, she learnt that she really does want to leverage her creative skills to help the broader community in a mission greater than herself. This means that non-profits are on the top of her list and preferred, although she does believe every company who helps people in some way is somewhere she wants to work at. She also learnt what type of team environment she prefers, and all sorts of other things like the fact she wants to do digital and/or content marketing, not JUST social media marketing.

We wish her the best for her digital marketing career going forward and are grateful for the contributions she made in her time here which made her an invaluable member of Harmony Place.

That said, if you do want to be connected with her, her LinkedIn is here.