Missed hearing from us? Here's how DITA is responding to COVID-19.
The arts & culture community has been rocked by the impacts of COVID-19 and, just like our fellow nonprofit programs, DITA has been keeping a close eye on developments and organizational guidelines. Beyond our mission to foster DEI within our community, DITA's primary focus in these times is to run a summer program that keeps our participants safe and healthy without sacrificing the experience our interns will use to grow into the future leaders of our community. Here's how we're approaching this goal:
DITA Events
The DITA internship sets itself apart from the crowd with our ongoing summer programming, hosted directly by our team and designed to bring our cohort closer together. To keep our interns and our speakers safe and healthy, DITA has shifted all of our May and June workshops to webinars. Our team meets weekly to discuss new COVID-related developments and is prepared to shift July and August programming to digital spaces as necessary.
Remote-Capable Internships
Just like most of our subscribers, our host sites have spent the last two months working remotely. This is an opportunity we have extended to our interns so they can participate in their internship without risking their safety. DITA is in the process of developing guidelines for host sites to ensure our interns are still integrated with their coworkers. Increased check-ins from the Program Coordinator will be used to verify the implementation of these guidelines and to make sure our interns are receiving the support they need.
Host Site Accommodations
We recognize that carefully balanced budgets have been hit hard by closures and programming cancellations. In response, DITA has removed the requirement for 2020 host sites to cover a portion of their intern's wages. Instead, we are giving all of our participating organizations a grant that will cover the entirety of their intern's wages.
