Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi All,

We'll be acquiring an intern for about 2 weeks and I was wondering if anyone has had any experience providing meaningful/educational tasks for them. I have a list of some things they can do but was hoping that I can learn of other things I may have not thought of. After this is completed we will be working on making this an actual program with the purpose of offering students an opportunity to learn about the specific parts of animal sheltering that they're interested in. So far the tasks I have are:

• Helping gather items for our Pet Pantry Program
• Do a little outreach by looking into human food pantries to see if they are interested in adding pet resources for anyone with an animal
• Prep kennels after an animal has been adopted
• Clean vet tools
• Create adoption folders
• If they're interested in graphic design they can help to make our training slides less bland
• Help our Youth Program Coordinator with prepping for Summer Camp

#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

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Demetrius Jackson
Volunteer Program Manager
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Greetings,  

Working on starting an Internship program is a great way to increase your exposure in the community, have more help in your organization with a fresh set of eyes, and set some new goals to shoot for as an organization.  I think your ideas are great.  I also like to engage with our Interns when they come in and make sure we gain something from them,  and they gain something from us= a win win for everyone.  I usually set up a meeting with them to discuss this as the Internship starts.  Setting some goals allows everyone to stay focused, and also helps other staff realize they are an Intern verses a staff member.  Hope that helps!

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Era MacDonald
Executive Director
The Merrymac Farm Sanctuary
VT
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For a two week internship on a short turnaround, I think your ideas are great! Another idea would be putting together a social media post or maybe making recommendations for social media in general, depending on your org's room for growth and their talents.

(ignore this if you're already aware!) Echoing Era, an internship should be either a career experience or a stepping stone toward such. I'd work with your interns to see

• what their major is, and if they have any requirements from their school for the internship
• what experience they are seeking to either get insight into career paths, apply something they're learning, or build their resume
  (working on general professional skills is also an option)
• how that can tie into some kind of project they can do.

We used to have a staff member in charge of internships at my campus. She worked out a few boilerplate ones that worked great for high schoolers interested in veterinary medicine. She would also work out individual internships for unique needs, however these were labor intensive for her. We leaned away from short term internships like your 2 week one since the intern hardly gets settled before they leave.

When we were looking to expand our internship opportunities, there was a lot of staff concern about the training time they would have to put in to interns, especially if it wasn't going to pay off for that dept, so that might be something to bear in mind as you expand your own program.

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James Pawlowicz
Humane Rescue Alliance
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