Calling all emerging change-makers!
The Institute for Policy Studies seeks dedicated young folks hungry for systemic transformation to join our Next Leaders Summer Program. Let’s be clear– this isn’t your typical summer internship. The world crisis in governance, economic stability, and ethical guidance demands that we do our best to prepare to secure and sustain a more just, green, and peaceful future starting, well, yesterday. The Next Leaders Program aims to compel action by sharpening young voices and new ideas through training in public scholarship, a term we define as the connection between policy research and grassroots activism. Team up with us for this 10 week program, and you can forget fetching coffee and filing folders!
THE EXPERIENCE
Our program is broken into 3 parts:
- Workshop and Events Series – We’ve prepared a curriculum of weekly workshops and events geared toward the following:
- Building community within your cohort
- Sparking inter-generational dialogue to brainstorm around new pressure points in the policy world
- Sharing skills needed to become a successful public scholar
- Providing a crash course on the frameworks, history, and current events of the progressive movement and policy sphere
- Mentorship – Each participant will get hands-on experience by working on one of our projects and will receive individualized mentorship and training from one of our IPS public scholars. Participants will be selected to work on an internship in one of the following focus areas:
- Inequality, Poverty, and Wealth
- New Economy and Climate Justice
- Foreign Policy and International Security
- Communications
- Fundraising and Development
- Journalism and Editing
- Coalition Lab – A centerpiece of our definition of public scholarship is that we work on ideas with movement allies. Through our Coalition Lab you’ll not only get plugged into the larger progressive network, but you’ll also be exposed to best practices of coalition building, grassroots activism, and organizing.
COMPENSATION AND ACADEMIC CREDIT
While we’re excited about the training experience we’re offering, we also know that you can’t pay for groceries with experience; therefore, we offer an hourly wage of $11.50 for 30 hours weekly to offset the cost of working with IPS while you help us build the future of the progressive movement.
IPS firmly believes that financial barriers shouldn’t exclude people from internship opportunities, and we are grateful to our donors who have made it possible to ensure this internship is paid. However, we strongly encourage applicants to find resources through their schools and other scholarships. Many schools offer assistance for summer internship programs, and we ask that all applicants explore those options first in order to allow us to accept a greater number of interns that do not have access to those resources.
Interns may also receive academic credit, and IPS is happy to assist interns in filling out any requisite forms to help with the credit process.
WHEN TO APPLY, IMPORTANT DATES, AND INTERNSHIP TERM
Summer 2016 Application Deadline: March 31, 2016
| April 5-15, 2016 | Applicants will be contacted for interviews and notified of acceptance to the program during this time. Due to the high volume of applications, only applicants selected for interviews will be contacted. |
| June 6, 2016 | Internship begins |
| August 11, 2016 | Internship ends |
Interns are expected to be available Monday-Thursday (30 hours per week). Please state your availability on your application. While we can offer some flexibility around the start date for students in the quarter system, we want to plan our workshop series with the highest level of attendance possible.
HOW TO APPLY
Our ideal applicants will be interested in exploring lasting careers in social justice, will be conversational and persuasive writers, and have a deep belief in intersectional, equitable solutions. Although we are not explicitly limiting our applicant pool, we believe that rising Juniors, Seniors, recent graduates, and first year master’s students will gain the most out of this program.
Part 1: Please fill out the application form. You are welcome to apply for up to two internship positions (descriptions listed in depth below).
Part 2: When you’ve submitted your form, please send your resume and a 2-page writing sampleto nextleaders@ips-dc.org with “Next Leaders Application 2016” in the subject line. For your writing sample, we say, go wild! This can be a blog piece, an essay excerpt, a letter to the editor for a newspaper, an article in your school’s newspaper, etc. (If you’re applying for the Visual Communication/Design internship, please also include samples of your graphic design work.)
Feel free to provide a couple sentences of context if you’re excerpting your selection from a larger piece. The important thing is for us to get a sense of something you’re passionate about…oh, and, we’d love to see if you can string a sentence together too