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Mission and Ministry

INTERNSHIPS

The Philadelphia Area Social Justice Internship (PASJI) is sponsored by the Center for Peace and Justice Education and the St. Thomas of Villanova Center for the Common Good. The program provides Villanova undergraduates a funded opportunity to do social justice work in the greater Philadelphia region over the summer, accompanied by opportunities for shared reflection among the student cohort. 

PROGRAM DETAILS

  • PASJI will be an 8-week internship for 20-25 hours/week from June 3-July 26, 2024.
  • Stipend is $3,000.  
  • Community gatherings and formational gatherings will take place throughout the process.  
  • Each gathering will include a short reading to enhance learning and discussion.

Internship responsibilities can include but must extend beyond basic administrative support. Students should be engaged in either content-driven work fundamental to the organization’s social justice mission and/or direct contact with the communities served by the organization.

There are four designated internship opportunities for 2024 and five internship positions.  Each site will host one or two interns. Alternatively, one position could be alloted to a student who secures a social justice internship with an organization outside the four listed. 

To search for social justice internships, students may wish to consult Handshake and consider the suggested Peace and Justice search criteria.  Students may then present a proposal for inclusion in the summer program with their own internship.

Integral to the internship community is a commitment to spend time with other interns discussing social justice topics and engaging in reflection and community sharing.

Search for Opportunities on Handshake:

Click on jobs and internships on the left navigation bar and select the job type (e.g. job, internship, volunteer...).

Some Employer Industry filters you may be interested in include:

  • Non-Profit - Other
  • NGO
  • Government - local, state and federal
  • Politics
  • Social Assistance
  • Halthcare
  • Environmental Studies
  • Religious Work

Choose 'save these filters' at the top of your page to revisit them quickly.

Create Career Interests:

Under my profile, select career interests and select the options that are most interesting to you. Some options to consider are:

  • Community and Social Services
  • Counseling
  • Education/teaching/training
  • Environmental/sustainability management
  • Fundraising and event management
  • Healthcare services
  • Political organizing/lobbying

When you fill out your career interests, Handshake customizes the jobs, events and articles that appear on your homepage based on your individualized preferences.

 

  

APPROVED PLACEMENTS

Villanova University | CRS Partnership

Through the VU/CRS Partnership Internship for Advocacy students will learn about and work on advocacy campaigns, awareness-raising efforts, and community mobilization around global social justice issues. Drawing on resources developed through the CRS University program and Catholics Confront Global Poverty Initiative, students will design promotional and advocacy campaigns for use by the Villanova CRS Ambassadors, a student group on campus promoting an engagement with the work of Catholic Relief Services. Currently the central themes of the CRS Ambassadors are migration, climate change, and human trafficking.

The student will gain exposure to global advocacy and partnerships, migration issues, climate change, etc.

Based at the VU | CRS Partnership office at Villanova, interns will contribute to developing advocacy resources. They may collaborate with the CRS Regional Office for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic in Media, PA, as well as with the CRS Advocacy Office in Washington, DC. Attendance at the CRS National Conference in the Washington, DC area, likely held in June (exact dates TBA), is mandatory for interns. 

Augustinian Defenders of the Rights of the Poor (ADROP)

In 2004, Jack Deegan, O.S.A., founded the Augustinian Defenders Of The Rights Of The Poor (Adrop). Bringing together leaders, service providers, and volunteers, Fr. Deegan initiated an assessment of the needs of the impoverished in South Philadelphia. Subsequently, our 150 volunteers and leaders have positively impacted the lives of over 1,000 families in the South Philadelphia area.

The work will focus on a number of social justice issues. The focus can be tailored to suit the interest of the intern. The ministries of ADROP mainly circle around immigration, mass incarceration, and access to health care.

ADROP offers two potential internships—one centered on ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and the other on accessible healthcare. The healthcare position caters to students interested in general public health issues or nursing students seeking direct healthcare experience. When applying, please specify the internship position of interest. If applying for the healthcare position, indicate whether you are a nursing student.

Position One

Position Two

 

Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educacion

At CCATE, our internships, virtual and/or in person, center around the strengths, skills, and areas of interest of students who come to work with us. Two of the main requirements we have for our interns are motivation and initiative, especially in the current context of virtual communication and online operations.

Embedded in CCATE's mission is the objective to "develop and empower the Latinx community through the promotion of culture, art, work training, and education" (CCATE, 2020). CCATE is both composed of and operated by the community it aims to impact. The organization values community insights and assets as valuable inputs, recognizing that members are the masters and curators of creative solutions. The lack of a hierarchical structure at CCATE fosters a belief that everyone can be a leader, acknowledging that each member has something to offer and is a valuable addition to the team.

Internships at CCATE focus on three areas, each supervised by a CCATE staff member. While interns will interact with all CCATE staff regularly, they will work most closely with the staff member assigned to their area.

  • Communications and Outreach (Supervised by Obed Arango)
    Examples of work in this area include website content development andmaintenance, content translation into Spanish, storytelling through social media (monthly newsletter, blog, etc.), high school immigration podcast and media, and virtual fundraising.
    Related skills or interests
    Communication skills in Spanish, writing in Spanish (a plus), knowledge of platforms or technologies for extending outreach and communication, film/video, media, journalism.
  • Programs and Administration (Supervised by Charlotte Stone)
    Examples of work in this area include teaching a class or tutoring students, tracking donations and sending donor letters, researching and planning curriculum for a summer program.
    Related skills or interests
    Teaching or content development skills, expertise in specific content areas, working with youth and families.
  • Research and Strategic Planning (Supervised by Holly Link)
    Examples of work in this area include administrative work related to strategic planning, online research (reading and synthesizing existing research and participatory research methods), data collection and compilation.
    Related skills or interests
    Strong writing skills, qualitative and community-based participatory research.

Bethel Community Life Center & Ardmore Victory Gardens

The Bethel Community Life Center and Ardmore Victory Gardens are a ministries of Bethel African-Methodist Episcopal Church in Ardmore, PA. Founded in 1895 by Black residents of the Mainline, Bethel AME is heavily involved in the local community, hosting social justice programs that address food insecurity, educational inequality, public health, and many other needs in the community. The current pastor Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness has been instrumental in leading the congregation in founding the the Ardmore Victory Gardens, a community garden that grows fresh produce to supply food banks throughout the area.

The work will focus on a number of social justice issues. The community garden work addresses both sustainability and creation-care, as well as access increasing food security and access to healthy produce. The vaccine clinics create opportunities to address public health concerns. The Juneteenth celebration invites the community into the liberating work of anti-racism and the cause of social equity, and the music series focuses on building community partnerships and highlighting local artists.

The specifics of the internship can be worked out between the needs of Bethel AME Church and the interests of the intern. If the intern is more heavily interested in the community garden, the intern could support the work of the community garden, which will be relocated for Summer 2024 to Haverford College. The Community Garden will host tea workshops, "How to Harvest" workshops, and tactile and thematic site visits for the community. The intern could assist in making site visits to multiple home-based gardens to those who need assistance for accessibility reasons. The intern might meet with local youth once a week to share about some aspect of the work of the community garden.

If the intern is more drawn to other aspects of community outreach, the intern might be involved in the planning and execution of the vaccine clinic, the Juneteenth celebration, and the community music series. A combination of foci may be worked out with the site.

Driving around may be a part of this internship, so the ability to become a vehicle-certified driver with Villanova would be a requirement. Regardless of the intern's emphasis, participation and assistance at the Juneteenth celebration will be required.

      

SELF SELECTED PLACEMENTS

Students may propose another internship which would be reviewed for approval by the program coordinators. One to two spots in the PASJI program have been reserved for this purpose.

Any internship should provide the opportunity to do social justice work in the greater Philadelphia area. Students may then present a proposal for inclusion in the summer program with their own internship. 

Email Josh Kammerer with any questions.

Check out a reflection by 2019 intern, Lailany!

With an interest in the criminal justice system, Lailany focused a significant amount of her time working for restorative justice ministries.

     

“Love, when it is true, is always directed away from oneself. It is transcendent. The two-fold commandment of love, therefore, translates into working for the common good, [and] working for the common good is service.” –The Augustine Way