About the Organization

Fauxels 2019, Man and Woman Near Table, accessed 17 October 2022 <https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-near-table-3184465/>

For this semester, I am pursuing an internship with a public non-profit organization dedicated to assisting underserved local communities as well as helping immigrants engage in civic and economic life. Founded in 2016 by its CEO, the organization has upheld its mission of empowering these groups by advocating for social justice and civic engagement and providing them services in education, healthcare, financial support, and senior support. Ever since its inception, they have been working hard to assist these local communities and immigrants such as during the COVID-19 pandemic where on January 24th, 2020, they distributed over 1,000 masks and hand sanitizer bottles to the local Astoria community in Queens,NY. Across the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization continued to assist individuals and local communities hurt by the pandemic by helping more than 1,500 individuals in filing for unemployment, providing over 20,000 individuals with face masks, hot meals, and hand sanitizers, and assisting over 630 people in scheduling an appointment for a free COVID-19 vaccine.

 

Beyond the pandemic, they have awarded over $10,000 in scholarships to financially struggling students, completed over 4,500 hours of cleaning local community parks and gardens, and assisting more than 350 seniors in connecting them to a senior day care and obtaining home health aid.

 

The organization is a medium sized enterprise with 80 people currently working there including its CEO, the Chapter Presidents across various countries like Egypt and Morocco, and the Leadership. On top of that, there are other directors, supervisors and interns like me working across the organization’s various departments such as Human Resources, Community Relations, Strategic Engagement and Communications & Marketing. I am currently working in the Communications and Marketing Department where I work on various design projects for the organization that range from redesigning old material like scholarship applications to designing new material such as articles and covers for the official organization magazine. Along with these departments, the organization is also partnered with several organizations including the New York City Police and Fire Departments, Apple, the MTA, and the New York State Senate and NYC Council among many others.

 

After doing some further research into the organization through their website and social media, I found two articles that interviewed the CEO. In the first article titled, “TUC Features: Neil Trivedi is Impacting Lives Through His ‘Unity For Equality’ Non Profit Organization”, the interviewer asked the CEO questions involving the inception of the organization, its various international chapters, and even its membership program. I was surprised to learn more about the organization’s membership program through this article and the various benefits it granted to its members such as “tourism, entertainment discounts, yearly galas, job assistance and programs scholarship assistance.” I was surprised to learn this because I previously only believed that a membership acted similarly to a subscription service where every month, whatever amount of money you chose to donate would go toward the organization. I did not expect to learn that this membership came with benefits towards food, entertainment, and even job and scholarship assistance.

 

In the second article from WeEmpower Magazine by Tammy Reese, Tammy also interviews the CEO about the organization, asking questions pertaining to the work the organization does, how feedback from individuals affects the organization and what plans are for the organization going forward. From this article, I was surprised to learn that the two areas in which the organization was receiving the most feedback pertained to their pandemic yoga program and their services in delivering hot meals to senior citizens and groceries to financially struggling individuals. It was surprising to learn how not only did the organization provide food and masks for people struggling during the pandemic but also physical and mental stimulation and exercise through their yoga program. To me, this demonstrates that the organization doesn’t just care about bettering the lives of their target groups through offering money and support services but also cares about the individual by providing them programs like yoga that stimulate them and provide them with a means of mental and physical exercise.

 

Citations

 

  • Nesmith, L., Wilkins, D., Austin, N., Magalit, J., Guidemann, M., & Khalid, E. (2022, July 15). TUC features: Neil Trivedi is impacting lives through his ‘unity for equality’ non profit organization. TUC. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.tucmag.net/features/interview-with-the-founder-of-unity-for-equality-a-non-profit-organization-changing-lives/
  • About. Unity for Equality. (2022, October 14). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://unityforequality.org/
  • Reese, T. (2021, August 14). Unity for Equality Founder and chairman, Neil Trivedi. The Empower. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://theweempower.com/2021/08/unity-for-equality-founder-and-chairman-neil-trivedi/