Internship Location: Hybrid Sheboygan Falls, WI
Organization Type: Nonprofit
Policy Areas: Health, mental health, health equity, education policy
This summer, I was the Development Intern for The Production Farm, a nonprofit behavioral and mental health organization for youth and families. With this being my first internship/job in a professional setting, I learned a lot. My tasks involved updating and tracking data, grant writing, cold calling individual stakeholders or organizations, developing a pilot program for mental health in schools, social media posts, and many meetings regarding development and policy changes in the organization. My final written testimony in PA 201 was very influential in this experience because I did it on increasing education on mental health. My knowledge of gaps in healthcare and current issues Wisconsin is facing in health policy helped me throughout my internship. I was surprised at how nonprofits operate, because I had no knowledge on it going into this experience. There are so many building blocks and different people involved. What I valued most about this internship was learning about how much impact the organization has had on my local community. Being involved in the planning of a new mental health program for children was very meaningful. I would recommend this internship to future students because I think I had a very unique experience. While I also would have loved an internship with the government, I think this was such an unheard of experience for me and I learned a lot about not just the policy issues they are working on but also fundamentals of nonprofits. It also helped that I was really passionate about the organization’s mission and population of interest. I can now think about my future career better by seeing what I liked and didn’t like throughout the experience. I also was able to talk with my coworkers and learn about their career paths, which gave me more to think about when creating my own.