Environmental Summer Crew Member 2013

CALLING ALL STUDENTS WHO WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD!

The Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization, Inc. (MEVO) is recruiting for its 2013 Summer Crew Season. MEVO is an environmental not-for-profit organization lead by college and high school students and works every day to create environmental sustainability throughout Northern New Jersey communities. We are looking for students who are passionate, friendly, and independent-thinkers that want to volunteer throughout local communities to change the suburbs to be ecological and sustainable. In this internship you will spend half of your day outdoors building hiking trails, maintaining organic farms, distributing recycling bins to local communities, and meeting with community members to engage more local residents in environmental sustainability and building solutions to local and global environmental problems. The second half of your day you will work with your crew in our office developing and researching new environmental sustainability projects, outreaching to local community groups, and getting hands on experience managing a not-for-profit organization from social media and website development to recruiting partners and grant applications. This internship is designed for someone who wants to be a leader in environmental sustainability and grow his or her skills in public speaking, self-motivation, decision-making, and many more traits that are valuable. It is a hands-on learning experience that shows you how to create, develop, and implement environmental solutions on a local level and how to manage, grow, and lead a not-for-profit incorporation. You will see how a low budget and new-age not-for-profit uses usually wasted resources and in-kind donations to create a cohesive program. It is our goal to give you an awesome internship experience that at the end of the summer inspires you to continue to make a difference in communities around the world. Above all, you will grow and develop a youth lead not-for-profit and for years to come be able to see the difference, you made, from the work you did. There is a lot to do and we need all the help we can get.

This internship will start in the beginning of May and end at the end of August. It is an unpaid part-time internship three days a week, all of our past summer crewmembers have had paid-jobs in addition to their internship with MEVO. However, if you are interested in having a full-time Summer Crew internship more than three days a week, it is 100% possible and should be mentioned in your application. This internship can be used for academic credit and we are always willing to hear requests for custom schedules for internships or volunteer work.

Responsibilities

Physical volunteering and getting dirty: Half of each day will be spent outdoors volunteering on a wide array of environmental projects. You will build hiking trails, clean-up trash and tires from local forests, and build organic farms and that is just a small example. In addition, you will go on hikes with your fellow crewmembers and spend A LOT of your summer outdoors! We value having both volunteer and administrative experience, so each internship day will be filled with both.

E-mailing , phone calling, and meeting: The second half of your day is administrative volunteer work in our office. You will get a huge amount of experience e-mailing, phone calling, and meeting with public officials from all spectrums of our communities, important township mayors and not-for-profit executive directors to local community members. As a Summer Crew Member, you will meet with them for many reasons from funding and donations to discussing local environmental issues and collaborating on a volunteer project.

Public speaking and making decisions: This is an unpaid internship and as an unpaid crewmember, we want you to leave MEVO with skills, abilities, and an education on how to be a leader and get people involved. This means that you will speak in public in front of groups of people of all ages. In addition, you will be needed to make decisions without always having your Crew Leader or fellow Crew Members there to help. We want you to leave our crew with confidence to be a leader in whatever environmental project or cause you work on in the future.

Requirements

Passionate, friendly, and independent thinkers: These types of characteristics help to make a difference in the world and to be able to work with different types of communities and people. You may feel like you have some but not all of these characteristics… have no fear! If you have an open mind and a willingness to learn about working with different people we are, more than happy to help you build your ability for these characteristics and more.

Mode of transportation: MEVO operates throughout North Jersey, which means during the internship we will travel throughout this greater area. However, this does not mean you need a car (we are an environmental organization after all =D) but you do need a way to get to our meet up location in Mahwah, NJ. We carpool for most days so we never need as many cars as crew members and even if you do drive your car most likely you will either be driving the carpool or carpooling in someone else's ride.

Attending Volunteer Events: MEVO was started with the belief that if you take action and volunteer in your community you can make a huge difference for the environment. We were founded four years ago with a trash clean-up lead by a group of High School students, and since then we have planned over 70 different volunteer events engaging over 340 people in over 18,000 hours of volunteer work. From trash clean-ups to tree plantings, MEVO does it all! MEVO's Earth Crew plans three to four environmental volunteer events every month; they are on Saturday or Sunday. As a crewmember, you are required to go to a minimum of two a month. We need as many people as possible - there is a lot of environmental degradation to stop!

Willingness to get hands dirty and do physical labor: We volunteer for the environment! This means we spend a lot of our time outdoors in nature and communities creating environmental sustainability. You will definitely get dirty and the work will be tiring so a willingness to do physical labor and make a difference with your own bare hands is necessary. Approximately half of every internship day is physical volunteer work.

Taking your work home with you: We are a local community not-for-profit organization, which means we are always connected and involved with any community we work with. That means that you have to take your work home with you: e-mails you send, phone calls you make, do not just stay at the office. People will e-mail and call you back at all hours of the day all days a week, no matter if you are in the office or not. You need to be willing to respond to these people and work on MEVO projects even when you are not in the office, a lot of our work is time sensitive and for the whole summer, you will be connected with your internship and your crewmembers.

Working Laptop or access to one: Our office work requires a laptop that you can use. You need a laptop because MEVO does not have the funding to provide you with one, although we can provide you with electricity to charge it. If you are a member of the summer crew, you need a laptop so that you can work on your projects big and small and stay engaged in the work we are doing. Sorry, but hand written letters just are not a way to get things done quickly and we are running out of time!!!!