Carla Frias’ Internship Experience at Rainforest Partnership Mixing marketing, social media and environmental activism.

October 6, 2021

Hola! My name is Carla and I am a Senior at Chapman University double majoring in Strategic and Corporate Communication and Religious Studies originally from Lima, Peru. During Interterm and Spring semester I wanted to become more involved in the environmental movement and interned as Social Media Marketer for Rainforest Partnership. Let me tell you about my experience!

Rainforest Partnership is a 501 non profit dedicated in the conservation of the Amazon Rainforest located in Peru and Ecuador. The organization focuses on creating stronger social and environmental policies that protect the well-being of the tropical rainforest in South America and its local communities.

When researching about what organization I wanted to intern for, one of the most important factors that I considered was company culture. It was important for me to find an organization that I could connect to its mission and values. I have always been interested in social and environmental justice – I worked as an Assistant at the Cross Cultural Center and the ran the Thrifties Club at Chapman (focused on sustainable fashion). Knowing where my passions lied helped me narrow down my choices to non-profits working in the environmental field.

I knew Rainforest Partnership was the perfect fit for me because it was a US based non-profit that connected environmental activists from Peru, Ecuador and the USA with conservation projects happening in the Amazon Rainforest. It was a great way to build bridges between my culture and all the ecological visionaries living in the US!

As a Social Media Marketer I was in charge of creating content for the non-profits Instagram page. I planned a posting schedule for each month on Trello and kept the Instagram posting on board. With everything being online, I was also able to attend meetings held by the Peru team and the US team to receive updates on projects and use that information to create relevant content.

One of my biggest responsibilities working in Social Media was learning about social media analytics. I had to track down how many likes, views and reactions each picture got depending on the type of picture, amount of text, or time of the day each picture was posted. I learned that publishing a post on Monday gets more views than on Fridays. Or that using less words on each picture gets more likes than heavy infographics.

Before, Instagram had always been a process of creating rather than of understanding. However, I now realize that it is important to go back to the analytics of each post to identify how you can make your page grow. I feel like I have grown as a content creator and understand better what type of pictures create more of an impact than others on social media pages.

Overall, this internship has been a great way to get more involved in the environmental movement. Since the job was online, I was able to connect with national and international environmental activists that are also passionate about supporting the conservation of animals, plants, and the natural world. Rainforest Partnership is taking steps to connect and incentivize better regulations to conserve the wellbeing of the Rainforest and of each other.

Following this semester I will continue to work for Rainforest Partnership as a Social Media Marketing volunteer. I thank School of Communication’s internship course for motivating me to intern for an organizations that relates to my personal interests on the environment and hope that I can keep inspiring more people to take care of our earth through the content and projects that I help produce.

Thank you for reading!