A local men’s health charity has recently benefited from the data analysis and marketing knowledge brought by two Keele interns.

Stone-based 15 Square provides physical and mental health advice for circumcised men, working with professionals to ensure they have appropriate information, clinical guidelines, and policies and research around the topic.

The company utilised Keele’s virtual Internships scheme to employ two interns to create a database to manage enquiries into the organisation and to update their current marketing strategy.

The virtual internships scheme has been developed to help charities and not-for-profit organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The scheme provides interns - a valuable remote working resource - for 100 hours at no cost to the charity, with the intern receiving up to £1,000, thanks to funding from Santander Universities.

New marketing initiatives implemented at 15 Square as a result of the internships have enabled the charity to commence a rebranding exercise. The marketing intern also helped the charity to optimise the website. In four weeks, web traffic increased by 101.89%, with the user base increasing by 75.62%.

Mustafa Dashti, intern and second year Medicine student, was responsible for creating 15 Square’s new database, as well as conducting statistical analysis and producing reports, enabling the charity to produce reliable statistics for publicity and outreach.

Mustafa said: “The experience has improved my ability to work independently on a project and developed my interview skills, both of which will help me to refine my CV and make me more confident when applying for graduate roles. Taking part in the Keele Internship scheme is a great opportunity for students or graduates to build their skills in a supportive environment.”

15 Square’s Chief Officer, David Smith, commented on the value the internship had brought to the charity, saying: “The interns have brought additional skills and input into areas where we lacked expertise. The support from the internship team has been very good and we were fully informed and involved throughout the process.

“Overall, the scheme has been excellent, and the quality of the interns have been outstanding.”

To find out more about our internship schemes, including Santander Universities UK programme and our fully-funded charity internships, please visit keele.ac.uk/internships.

For more information about internships and other support opportunities available to businesses, please visit www.keele.ac.uk/business.