Tag Archive: internship

  1. 2024 Summer Communications Internship Announcement

    17 Comments

    Voices for Virginia’s Children is thrilled to open the application period for our 2024 Summer Communications Internship!

    Are you (or someone you know) a current college or master’s student (or recent grad) interested in learning more about cause-based communication and marketing strategy and how non-profits tell their story? Does brainstorming creative strategies for social media, fundraising, and stakeholder engagement sound exciting to you? Are you looking for an opportunity to build your professional experience while supporting an outcomes-driven organization that advocates for the well-being of young people across the State of Virginia?

    This may be the internship for you!

    How You’ll Grow:

    • Writing: The intern will support the curation, development, and copy editing of online and print content that can be added to their professional portfolio.
    • Social Media Management: The intern will develop their skillset for creating, editing, publishing, and reporting on social media marketing efforts.
    • Communications Strategy: The intern will learn and develop their communication strategy through participation in regular strategy, planning, and implementation opportunities.
    • Project Management: The intern will be given a number of projects to manage and own during the internship to develop their management skills.
    • Collaboration: The intern will learn how to manage multiple stakeholder groups and projects.
    • Development Communications: The intern will learn how communications and development work hand-in-hand in non-profit environments and develop collaborative projects involving donor communications

    Structure of the Internship:

    The internship offers an hourly rate of $15 and will run from June 14 to August 16 in a hybrid format, offering a mix of remote and in-person work totaling 20-30 hours per week. Onboarding will include team introductions, subject matter deep dives, and ensuring the intern is set up for success from day one.

    Interns will receive regular 1-on-1 meetings with their supervisor for mentorship and progress reporting, as well as attend virtual learning sessions and professional development events of their choosing, all supported by a generous stipend.

    Don’t miss out on this chance to jumpstart your career in communications while making a difference in the lives of Virginia’s youth. Apply now to join our team and be part of something truly impactful!

    Applications due by April 19th, 2024 at 5:00 PM. 

    Apply Here

    Questions? Contact info@vakids.org

  2. Dillon Wild Learns Public Policy Best Practices During Voices’ Internship

    Leave a Comment

    Written by Cassie Price

    With a bang of his gavel, Chairman Emmett Hanger abruptly ended the May 29 Virginia Senate Finance Committee meeting, after declaring Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment out of order. Hanger realized just in time that Norment’s attempted parliamentary maneuver would prevent a vote on Medicaid expansion from reaching the full Senate, effectively shutting down the possibility of Medicaid expansion in Virginia in 2018.

    The next day, the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates voted to expand Medicaid to an additional 400,000 low-income Virginians.

    Dillon Wild witnessed first-hand the dramatic turn of events at the May 29 committee meeting. He attended the meeting on the second day of his internship with Voices for Virginia’s Children, which advocated for Medicaid expansion as a way to improve family health outcomes and economic stability.

    “It was a really exciting introduction to my internship,” said the graduate student at University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. “I saw how something seemingly small could change the course of politics.”

    “It was a really exciting introduction to my internship. I saw how something seemingly small could change the course of politics.”

    Dillon learned about the Voices internship when a Batten School counselor sent around a list of internship postings. “I recognized Voices because I had used Voices’ KIDS COUNT data for a paper I wrote on children’s mental health,” he said.

    He traced his initial interest in children’s issues to discussions with his mother, an early childhood educator. She often spoke of the lack of resources available to meet the needs of low-income children, he said.

    This spring, Dillon explored children’s issues in more depth through a social policy course taught by a UVA professor who had lobbied Congress on behalf of children.

    Dillon’s summer internship focused on two projects: researching the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) and Voices’ campaign to promote trauma-informed policies and practices.

    The FFPSA reforms federal funding of the foster care system in order to prevent children from entering foster care and to improve the well-being of children already in foster care.

    “I read the legislation several times and thought about what Voices needs to do to be ready for the implementation of Family First,” Dillon said. “I met stakeholders and legislators working on this and assisted Voices’ foster care policy analyst Allison Gilbreath in creating an informational Family First webinar and the accompanying slides.

    “My trauma research involved looking at how other states expanded trauma-informed policy and practice across institutions, agencies, and organizations.”

    Now back at UVA, Dillon has been talking to his classmates about their internships.

    “I realized I was lucky to work with Voices,” he said. “Voices does a really good job of exemplifying best practices for forming public policy, as we are learning about it in my program.

    “Voices does a really good job of exemplifying best practices for forming public policy.”

    “For example, Voices’ policy director Emily Griffey made a list of stakeholders and community partners who should be involved in the trauma-informed agenda. At the first meeting with our trauma-informed partners, she asked, who is missing? Who else should we invite? This taught me the importance of including all stakeholders when crafting public policy.”

    He recalled a UVA classmate speaking about her internship with a nonprofit that had no data to back up its policy agenda. “By contrast, the KIDS COUNT data supports Voices’ public policy,” he said.

    Dillon will continue his internship with Voices on a part-time basis this semester and will work with Voices on his master’s capstone project next semester.

    “I feel very lucky to have had this experience with Voices,” Dillon said. “I learned a lot more than I thought I would. Going forward, I want to stay involved with children’s policy.”