My Work experience blog

Conor worked with Horizon Nua as part of the Transition Year internship programme we run as part of the  NBS Eduworld project to encourage young people to think about careers working in or for nature.

Hi, My name is Conor McCarthy.

I'm 15 years old and have been on transition year work experience with Nature based enterprise/not-for-profit Business Horizon Nua. Throughout my week of work experience I have learned many things about what it's like to work at an office. I used to believe that office jobs were dead, silent, boring spaces but my opinion has been turned around completely. I have found working in an office to be a much more enthusiastic area than I had predicted. Although some of the various tasks I was given became tedious I still feel I've learned lots about the work that's done in Horizon Nua.

Horizon Nua

Horizon Nua is a partner in a EU funded project called GoNaturePositive! and that project has just opened a worldwide consultation on what a nature-positive economy might look like.  Horizon Nua is responsible for leading this process and my task was to allocate responses to the consultation that had been collected in workshops and events into the different target groups who have been asked to provide feedback. I also took part in the consultation and gave my feedback as part of the online process.

Day 1

On day 1 of my work experience with Horizon Nua I was introduced to the lovely staff who  welcomed me with open arms. My first task was to re-organise all of the images from the master drive into one compact file, sorting them into different categories based on where they were obtained and the projects they belong to. I learned some great organisational skills from doing this and feel it has benefited my skill set. I also sat in on a team progress meeting where everyone shared how they got on with their workload the previous week and their plans for the week ahead. 

Day 2

On day 2, I started the day by finishing the organisation from the previous day. I was then handed the task of helping out on a Stakeholder Engagement Consultation that Horizon Nua is leading on one of the projects that they work on called GoNaturePositive!  I had quite a number of jobs here that took me a couple of days to complete.  These included inputting data and feedback into a spreadsheet gathered on what a nature-positive economy might look like. It was on Day 2 that I learned the most about what Horizon Nua does and the people they work with. Horizon Nua works with cities and organisations from around the world to encourage them to use more nature-based solutions and work towards a nature-positive economy (NPE). Nature-based solutions can create lots of opportunities for cleaner healthier towns and cities, help reduce climate disasters such as flooding and help protect our plants and animals and help to encourage biodiversity. Nature-based solutions also provide lots of job opportunities for people to set up businesses delivering nature-based solutions and also for people to use nature-based solutions to support their businesses for example in tourism (walking/ cycling trails or foraging) or using smart technology such as sensors to measure air quality or moisture in soil to help manage the care of trees in parks and on our roads etc.

Day 3

I continued working with Hadiza (pictured here) on the consultation.  As well as finishing inputting all the data, I worked on the editing of some of the consultation documents.  I was working in different languages - German, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and Italian using Google Translate.  Once I had that done, I was emailing with the communications partner for the project so they could share the work on the Go Nature Positive website and with the project partners.

Day 4

I finished my week by writing this blog.  I really enjoyed my time in Horizon Nua.  The work was interesting, the team was very friendly and helpful and I learned something completely new.  I had some understanding of the climate crisis and the fact that different species of plants and animals are in danger of dying out but I didn’t know much about how we can work with nature to help improve our world, our town and cities. Nature-based solutions and nature-based enterprises are going to be so important to help in the fight against climate change and help protect our planet. I hope to see the difference they make soon!!