Noah Foster
RRASC 2015 Final Report, Stonewall Youth
My internship was at Stonewall Youth, which is a queer youth group in Olympia, Washington. I’m from outside of Boston and go to school in Amherst, MA, so it was a huge new experience for me to move across the country for 2 ½ months! Overall, I had an amazing experience and I learned a lot about social justice and non-profit work.
Some of the things I did during my internship were boring, menial tasks. I answered the office phone and checked the messages, getting back to people when it was necessary. The majority of the time, people were calling for information about the organization because they or their child wanted to attend. I also answered emails, which were similar to the calls, but also often involved other organizations asking us for help fundraising, advertising, or organizing an event. In addition, I did some data entry, which was just typing up all our demographic data on the youth who attended drop-ins and support group each week. This was boring, but important because it allows Stonewall Youth to keep better track of the communities it serves, as well as apply for grants that are specifically for organizations that work with certain communities. In addition, I helped stuff envelopes for a fundraising mailer that went out to previous donors and contacts, as well as formatting/editing some communication to donors and contacts. I also helped maintain the organization’s Facebook presence by posting about twice a week reminding people about drop-ins, as well as telling people about local events in the community. I posted some articles that were relevant to Stonewall Youth’s mission, mostly about social justice and activism, which was pretty easy since my Facebook feed is full of that.
Capitol City Pride in Olympia (where Stonewall Youth is located) happened the weekend of my second week at Stonewall Youth. I did a lot to help out at our Pride booth, and we were able to use Pride as a fundraising opportunity. I helped make a queer trivia game for the booth for people to pay to play, and I screen-printed some patches with cats on them to sell. During Pride, I worked at our booth pretty much all weekend, running the trivia game, selling food, and providing a “home base” for our youth during the festival. Pride happened during Saturday and Sunday, and on Saturday night Stonewall hosted a queer youth dance, because most pride activities are only for people who are 21+. I helped set up for the dance and clean afterwards, as well as working at the door to check people in. A few weeks later, I went with another volunteer and a few youth to Trans Pride in Seattle, which was great.
I had two pretty large projects during my internship. My first one had to do with fundraising. To start, I researched a lot about grassroots fundraising. It wasn’t something I expected to be interesting, but it was actually fascinating. I read a fundraising handbook from a group for queer youth of color in NYC called FIERCE, and they’re really clear and intentional about integrating their fundraising into their general mission statement of empowering queer youth of color. They have a program where youth meet with major donors, which not only makes the donors see directly where their funds are going but also empowers the youth. After reading that handbook, I read through a book called Fundraising for Social Change by Kim Klein, which is a general guide to fundraising strategies and techniques. I decided to combine these theories of fundraising, and really focus on involving youth in fundraising.
I designed and facilitated two workshops relating to fundraising, both co-facilitated with another intern. The first was an introduction to fundraising and economic injustice. We had a really great conversation with the youth, and we really got into things like stereotypes about low-income people, the American “bootstraps” myth, and more. On the workshop evaluation forms (which I designed!) people said that they really liked it. One youth even wrote, “I appreciate being involved in a community that really takes time to talk about these and other issues.” That was great, and made me feel really appreciated and valued for my work. Youth also said that they really wanted to be taught specifics of how to fundraise, so I did that for my second workshop, which was a couple weeks later.
Before the second workshop, I look back at Kim Klein’s Fundraising for Social Change and also did a bit more research about helping youth plan fundraising events (or really any events). I learned that the best empowering and helpful thing to do is to provide a backbone path for youth to follow, without doing the work for them—because what’s the point of that? I created a “handbook” for special event planning, which was pretty long and had very specific steps regarding making a timeline, writing a budget, delegating responsibilities, etc. For the second workshop, we helped youth go through the beginning of the handbook and design their own event. They chose to design a Secret Café/Dinner Theatre, which I thought was awesome! I helped them plan, and in the next few weeks I kept bringing it up to get the planning going. It was a great experience, but unfortunately my internship ended before I got to see if the event actually happened or not. The handbook, I think, was good, because some coworkers told me they wanted to use it for the Gayla (which is Stonewall Youth’s huge annual fundraising event).
The other project I did for fundraising was to plan a Phone-a-Thon. I wrote out a script and wrote down what needed to be done, but I also had to leave before that happened.
Another large part of my internship was helping with the hiring process of a new Program Co-Director. At first, my role was to participate in and support the committee that was in charge of creating the job announcements through note-taking and follow-ups, as well as helping to create the job announcement itself. Then we formed a new committee that was specifically for hiring the new Program Co-Director. I participated in this committee, and it took many, many hours. Again, I supported the committee with follow-up emails, scheduling, and printing applications. I also helped create interview questions. In addition, I was present for all meetings and interviews. The process took a long time, and my internship ended about a week before the new Program Co-Director was hired. Fortunately, the candidate that I thought was best for the job was the person who was hired. The last few weeks of my internship were pretty much taken over by the hiring process.
Of course, one of the biggest highlights of my internship at Stonewall Youth was working directly with the youth. I was present for all drop-in hours (when youth have access to the space and can hang out with other queer youth and queer adult volunteers, or attend educational programming like the workshops I facilitated) and for all support group meetings (when youth have specific times to talk about what’s going on in their lives and receive emotional support from their peers). The success of this part of my job is hard to quantify. While a large part was just looking after the space during drop-ins and therefore allowing drop-ins to happen twice a week, I believe that simply connecting with the youth was important too. I was able to educate some of the youth on social justice, as well as connect personally with them and, sometimes, help them through crises. It was amazing that some of the youth came to trust me enough to come to me in times of extreme emotional distress/vulnerability, and even though those times were difficult for me, it felt good to know that I could help.
During drop-ins, when new youth came to the space, I conducted intake interviews for them. These intakes had a couple of purposes. One was so that we would have a better sense of our demographics, for grants and programming. Another was so that we would get to know each new youth better as they entered the space. During intake interviews, I had to ask some tough questions, like, “Are you now, or have you ever been, homeless?” and, “Have you ever contemplated suicide?” Frequently, the answers to questions like these would be yes. Some youth told me when they answered those questions that they didn’t really tell those things to anyone. I learned how to make people feel more comfortable having these difficult conversations through verbal and non-verbal communication. One thing I found that really helped was just speaking in a softer voice, and really making sure people knew that I was listening to them.
I used writing skills often in my internship, from writing communications to donors and job announcements. I also used my skills in facilitation to facilitate a couple of workshops. Most of all, however, I used communication skills to help communicate in respectful, compassionate ways with the youth, especially when I sometimes disagreed with them.I had some difficulties when I would notice youth supporting structures of oppression, and sometimes I didn’t know how to call them out in a way that wasn’t accusatory. It was really helpful for me to talk these things out with my coworkers, to get a better sense of what was going on. After that, I felt like I could better assess these situations and try and teach the youth about systems of oppression that they might have been supporting.
It was also difficult when I felt really overworked and undervalued by the youth. I overcame it, again, by talking with my coworkers. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you try, you’re not making a real difference. At times like that, I learned it’s great to just take a step back and do an inventory. Even just looking over the list of things I had done since starting my internship really helped change my views, and thinking that even if I couldn’t make everything in the organization perfect, it probably would have been worse without me.
The highlight of my internship experience was definitely working with the youth, or perhaps even more, meeting volunteers and staff-people who were interested in the same kind of social justice work as I was. They taught me to have a deeper understanding of intersectional social justice. I met a broad range of people with a broad range of experiences, which was great. I also learned a lot about the non-profit world and that was really helpful.
My academic studies helped me by providing me with a lens through which to see systems of oppression and how the organization was upholding and fighting them. In addition, my internship was really self-directed. As a Hampshire College student, I have experience choosing what I’d like to do a project on or research, and then just doing it. I’ve learned to hold myself accountable for my work, which was really helpful during my internship.
My internship made me realize that I can absolutely get a job in the non-profit world after I graduate college. I do plan on going to graduate school, but not for a few years after graduation.
The organization I worked at was really great. Although I was there during a time of transition for the organization, I met some extremely dedicated, intelligent people. The organization had an amazing history, and I had never heard of another queer youth organization that was as social justice-oriented. The internship itself was a really eye-opening experience. Although it was really difficult at times, I learned so much and really grew as a person and as an activist.
Since my organization had to do with queer youth, I didn’t think about reproductive justice very frequently. However, I did notice it when talking about sex ed. and relationship dynamics. I learned more about how these dynamics are really shaped by social justice and oppression.
My suggestion for future RRASC interns would be to use the first chunk of your internship to just learn. Learn about the organization, learn about its history, learn about who works there, learn who they serve, learn about similar organizations, learn about other non-profits in the area. That way, you can know exactly what to do to help the organization the most. You only have 10 weeks, so you want to use your time in a way that’s helpful to the organization.
It’s also important to know that you can’t do everything, and burnout it real. It’s important to take time off, even if you feel like you can do more than full-time. Something that is really nice is, if possible, to try and find something to do that has nothing to do with your internship. That provides you with a nice break, and then you can go back to your work with a fresh look.
Overall, my internship was an amazing experience. I’m so thankful to have had this experience. I worked so, so hard, and I really grew as a person and it was all worth it.