Internship Information

Minnesota – MUST: Poverty, Inequality, and Social Change

The following provides detailed information on internships that have been available most recently. Sites often change in response to the needs of local organizations and the specific interests of students participating in the program where possible.  

City of Saint Paul Mayor’s Office
The two students placed in the Mayor’s office the semester worked with the Education Initiatives, particularly on the Neighborhood Learning Campuses, and the Second Shift Initiative. They helped to coordinate the Saint Paul Teacher-Youth Worker Conference. At the conference they presented their own individual research on Learning Campuses and participated in expanding a framework for youth success in listening sessions and working groups. They also played a key role in evaluating the conference for future partnerships and programming.

East Side Neighborhood Development Company
Founded by East Side residents and business owners in 1979, ESNDC works to help revitalize the neighborhood through housing opportunities and assistance, business assistance, and services to families through the Eastside Family Center. ESNDC collaborates with community members, business owners and funding agencies to develop a vision for the future of our community and implement strategies to make that vision a reality. The MUST student working here this semester helped to design and conduct community outreach and door knocking with a neighborhood survey for the future visioning of neighborhood development and community aspirations.

The district office of Congressman Keith Ellison
Representative Keith Ellison is serving his second term representing the Fifth District of Minnesota, which consists of Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. The MUST student worked in the Congressman’s district office, housed in the Urban League in North Minneapolis. Her primary responsibilities were related to responding to and documenting constituent calls and correspondence through the office. She took up case files related to re-entry and the Second Chance Coalition and what men and women face when they leave jail or prison to re-enter society.

HIRE Minnesota
HIRE Minnesota is working to ensure that public investments in infrastructure and renewable energy help lift people out of poverty reduce racial disparities and contribute to healthier communities for all of us. The MUST student worked with HIRE to document their listening sessions with community members. She played a leadership role at the Clean Energy Forum and prepared for and led the Youth Listening Session.

HOME Line
HOME Line provides free legal, organizing, education and advocacy services so that tenants throughout Minnesota can solve their own rental housing problems. They work to improve public and private policies relating to rental housing by involving affected tenants in the process. The MUST student this semester worked as an organizer on the Tenant Bill of Rights campaign. He spent time at the capitol and led a group of constituents to meet with their legislators and talk about the Tenant Bill of Rights. He also worked to strategize about bridging the tenant hotline efforts and the policy agenda for a Tenant Bill of Rights.

Kateri Residence
St. Stephen's Kateri Residence provides safe and sober housing to American Indian women recovering from chemical dependency.  Kateri blends traditional recovery methods such as AA and 12-step with a focus on American Indian culture and spirituality as a means of healing. The MUST student worked directly with residents at Katari house with support groups, one-to-one sessions, and in-service trainings. She also researched, read, and talked with residents about Native American history and culture.

Latino Economic Development Center
LEDC is a non profit organization that was founded by Latino leaders in different fields of community development who share the same vision for a thriving multicultural community, enriched with Latino leadership, culture and economic influence. The MUST student researched other OICs, or workforce training centers, and models to help create a plan for an OIC that provides classes in Spanish and that will be designed for the Latino community in Minnesota. He was also able to connect this research with local green jobs networks in the Twin Cities to build future partnerships for LEDC.

Outfront MN
OutFront Minnesota's mission is to make our state a place where GLBT Minnesotans have the freedom, power, and confidence to make the best choices for their own lives.

Their slogan: Leading Minnesota Toward GLBT Equality – reflects the leadership role they provide in moving the state toward the elimination of homophobia and toward full equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, and bringing allies into the movement. OutFront Minnesota provides this leadership by delivering programs and services to the GLBT and allied community in the area of public policy, anti-violence, education and training, and the law. The MUST student this semester researched, wrote, and organized to support the legislative work at the capitol, particularly for lobby day. She wrote materials that Outfront will continue to use for their legislative work and spoke at a rally at the capitol.

Saint Stephen’s Human Services
The Mission of St. Stephen’s is to end homelessness through effective partnerships, programs and advocacy. In addition to their three homeless shelters located in the Twin Cities metro area, St Stephen’s also has various programs for people experiencing homelessness including employment and housing services and the Homeless Against Homelessness (HAH) Committee, an advocacy group led by people experiencing homelessness. They also conduct “A Day In The Life” a homelessness simulation workshop for groups interested in learning more about the realities of people experiencing homelessness in the Twin Cities. The MUST student led groups through the “A Day in the Life” program, and worked on the education and advocacy campaign showing the impacts of the Governor’s cuts to GAMC (General Assistance Medical Care) and the potential impacts of the national Health Care Reform bill.

Southside Family School
Southside Family Charter School (SFCS) is a small urban k-8 program dedicated to academic excellence, innovation in curriculum, and parent and community involvement. They focus on a social justice curriculum that teaches students to be independently minded citizens who respect themselves and others. The MUST student this semester worked as a teacher’s aid in the second grade math classroom and worked individually with students with special tutoring or homework needs.

Take Action Minnesota
TakeAction Minnesota works year round to make change that matters to Minnesotans by organizing at the grassroots, building dynamic and effective coalitions, educating voters, endorsing and electing progressive candidates, impacting state and local policy, and winning issue campaigns. TakeAction Minnesota’s work is focused in several areas.  The Make Health Happen campaign is a multi-year effort designed to build a grassroots and coalition-based movement to achieve guaranteed, quality, affordable health care for everyone in Minnesota.  The Democracy Reform campaign focuses on supporting, protecting and expanding the right to vote, including our ambitious new campaign to restore voting rights to people with a felony conviction in Minnesota.  The Hmong and Native American organizing projects are designed to engage and develop leaders within those communities, and build the capacity to advocate for change on priority issues within the community. They are building a massive base of individuals and organizations to develop a vision for the 2010 Governor’s race, then leverage the candidate endorsement process to elect a governor who will govern alongside the progressive movement. We had three students working with Take Action this semester. The first student worked as an organizer with the Health Care campaign organizing and mobilizing the effort to support the national Health Care Reform Bill. He led a group of Minnesotans to Washington DC for a rally at the nation’s capitol. The second student worked with the Second Chance Program, which focuses on the rights of criminal offenders and re-entry programs and policies. The third student worked with the grassroots democracy coalition planning events and conducting outreach for candidate forums that led to Take Action's endorsement for the MN Governor’s race.

Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE)
Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE), Inc. was founded by a group of multi-cultural/national, first-generation immigrant women in 1995 as a vehicle for social, economic and leadership empowerment of Asian, African, and Latina women and girls. With the mission of “empowering immigrant women and girls to succeed”, most of WISE’s constituents are refugee/immigrant women, girls and their families in the Twin-Cities, prominently in the St. Paul area. The MUST student worked with Project Achieve, an after school college preparation leadership development program at Higher Ground Academy. She worked one-to-one with seniors filing out their FAFSA, applying for scholarships, writing essays, and making decisions about college. As a direct result of her work, all of these students will be graduating and entering college in the fall.

Additional MUST: Poverty, Inequality, and Social Change Internships and community partners:

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