A quarter of rewarding experience to gain grassroots organizing skills with professional organizers.
The CALPIRG Internship program is designed for college students who are looking to increase their experience in political organizing and strategy. This program provides interns with opportunities to build their leadership skills, political engagement, and interest in advocacy careers. Interns will work remotely on a variety of different campaigns and take part in weekly tactical workshops to develop their skills.
Internship Program Details
Our approach requires each intern not only to develop expertise in campaign strategy, but also to become skilled in organizing and the political process. As an intern you will work side by side with professional organizing staff.
The Campaign:
- Our priority campaign this fall is our New Voters Project working to help students register to vote for the 2020 Elections. On Election Day, young people will be the largest and most diverse group of potential voters, with distinct values and ideas. CALPIRG is running a massive non-partisan voter registration effort across the state. This fall interns will work to register their peers to vote, host educational and visibility events, build diverse campus vote coalitions, and Get-Out-the-Vote for the election.
- We will also work this fall on other projects- like fighting climate change and addressing the rising cost of college.
Responsibilities will include:
- Organizing political support. CALPIRG interns will help to broaden the constituency for our campaign, assist in building, organizing, and managing a coalition of groups that are interested in increasing the youth vote.
- Devising an effective strategy to implement civic engagement plans on college campuses. Interns will work to craft effective tactics for the campus to use to increase voter participation and work to hit goals each week that elevate the status of our campaign work.
- Grassroots organizing. Interns will work to mobilize volunteers, run voter registration drives, recruit dues-paying members, and build a buzz for the election.
- Media outreach. Interns work to get our issues and opinions covered by the media, through news releases, opinion editorials, online webinars, and more.
- Attending a weekly skills workshop. Each week interns will be taught grassroots campaigning skills from our professional staff, some of whom have worked in student organizing for over 30 years.
The list of skills workshops include:
- Digital campaigning- How to mobilize student voters in the time of COVID-19
- Working with the media –Generating media coverage on the youth vote
- Running a meeting-From getting the right people in the “room/zoom” to facilitating a productive meeting
- Building diverse and effective coalitions and mobilizing student leaders
- Developing winning campaign strategies and tactics
- Public Speaking –in forums varying from virtual classrooms to town halls and press conferences
- Using social media to educate and mobilize
APPLY ONLINE:
Please apply using this form.
Term:
Fall quarter
Requirements:
The internship is an average of 10 hours per week. Interns will participate in the campaign and organizational priorities of the chapter.
A commitment to making a difference on issue based campaign work
Strong organizational abilities
The ability to engage others, whether one-on-one or in a group
The ability to think strategically
Strong writing and communication skills
Previous campaign and/or advocacy experience is a plus but not required.