Internship Location: Madison WI
Organization Type: Nonprofit/NGO
Policy Areas: Social Welfare, Unconditional Cash Transfers, Family/Early Childhood Policy
My internship with the research project, Baby’s First Years: Mother’s Voices, at the Institute for Research on Poverty was incredibly meaningful. I worked on the qualitative aspect of the study, cleaning and coding transcripts of interviews with mothers receiving unconditional cash transfers. Listening to these interviews was powerful, as it provided me with real examples of how real people navigate the social welfare system and life as a whole. I loved my team working on BFY:MV, they were always there for support or to answer any questions I may have. In particular, my supervisor, Dr. Sarah Hapern-Meekin, was incredibly helpful in offering career advice and connecting me with others in the social welfare field. This was a relatively low time commitment, which was made clear during the interview process, averaging about two interviews per week (around six hours total). I didn’t mind this at all, as it allowed me to keep my regular Madison job at the same time. This internship strengthened my passion for working with low-income communities and furthered my interest in exploring interventions that best serve the populations they aim to help. I would highly recommend this internship to anyone interested in social policy, qualitative research, or poverty studies.