Work Experience for Age UK Norwich

Rosie Beckingham joined the Age UK Norwich team at Marion for 2 weeks to take part in work experience as part of her college education.

Throughout the weeks Rosie worked with various members of the team.Rosie created a short biography summarising her time and reflecting on her experience, this biography is available to read below.

My name is Rosie and I’m currently completing my A-Levels where I am studying Geography, Psychology and Photography. I am looking to study Fashion Communication (with business) at university after completing a gap year. I chose to carry out my two weeks of work experience at Age UK Norwich (AUKN) to do marketing because I wanted to have some real experience of the field I wish to study, before I go to university and to consolidate that it was something I would like to do in my career.

Going into this experience, I was slightly apprehensive as I was going into a new type of environment which I hadn’t experienced before, but as soon as my work experience began, I was immediately relaxed and at ease due to the welcoming environment all the staff created. The team were very adaptive in giving me tasks which catered to my situation at the time, allowing me to work remotely from home as well as on site with the rest of the staff. On my first day I was given a talk discussing what Age UK Norwich aims to do and achieve, and how they do it, along with safety briefings from the CEO, Dan Skipper.

Throughout my time working at AUKN, I was assigned a variety of tasks to help with marketing, such as posting content on social media sites, such as Facebook, updating the AUKN website, to make sure that everything on the website was current and relevant, I was also helping to create newsletters for the volunteers, which help inform them of things that are going on within the organisation, along with researching ideas of activities for the AUKN team to do to improve their well-being, among many other things.

Through doing my work experience with AUKN, I have come to learn about the importance of fighting loneliness for people in later life. Most people would think of loneliness as just being something that could make you feel a bit sad, but it can affect your health and decrease your life expectancy which is why AUKN is battling to overcome this, by providing a variety of social and active groups which cater to a vast variety of specific needs.

One thing that I found challenging was working remotely as it pushed me to work independently, but I found that it actually built my confidence around working mainly by myself and now going forward I feel like I will be better able to work independently which is a major life skill that I am glad to have picked up.

During my time at Age UK Norwich, I have picked up many new skills which will aid me in future experiences, such as working in a team, communication, IT and along with this, a better understanding of how to live a healthier later life, and how to aid people in later life. Which has made me a lot more confident for going into new experiences that I will face in other parts of my life.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to do my work experience at AUKN, and I really enjoyed my time and feel as though it has taught me many things.