Success story: Jodie Chan interns at charity: water

Success Stories | Nov 10, 2014 | Gabelli School of Business

Gabelli junior Jodie Chan is finding her internship at charity: water inspiring and productive.

From her seat in a Soho nonprofit’s office, Jodie Chan gets to see a part of the world get better.

Bringing clean water to underdeveloped areas is the mission of charity: water, and for Chan, a 20-year-old Gabelli School of Business junior, the work is both fulfilling and career-boosting.

Chan is majoring in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship and a minor in sustainable business. All three areas of her education are being put to use at charity: water, where she helps on the charity’s water programs team, which monitors the progress of its projects.

“I get the chance to look how charity: water transfers their money into actual water sites,” Chan says.

That works helps her to know “how people’s lives were changed after the water project was built,” she says. “And I get to know how many people actually benefit from the water projects and where exactly is the water project.”

The happiness of those affected by the work charity: water does is touching, Chan says.

“All the smiles in the pictures are so powerful that I just want to keep looking at the pictures,” Chan wrote in a description of her work. “And I know I’m doing the right thing.”

The work, she says, is helping her decide whether she wants to be a for-profit social entrepreneur or work in the nonprofit sector after graduation.

While she is not sure what her social issue she is passionate about, she knows she wants to help people, a path she said she chose after a service trip to Peru last year in which she helped distribute shoes to those in need.

“I was so inspired,” the Hong Kong native says.

“I always grew up in a city, so I took everything for granted,” Chan says. ‘I never thought of how a pair of shoes means so much for a (disadvantaged child). After the trip, I just knew that I had to do something to give back to the world.”