Community Programs Intern

Hours: 10-20 hours per week (must be available most weekends)

Location: Hybrid; Work will be split between (1) North Hollywood office, (2) food recovery events across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and (3) remote.

Duration: 10-12 weeks

Organizational Overview: Food Forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same. Fruits and vegetables are collected in Los Angeles and Ventura counties from backyard fruit trees, orchards, farmers markets, and the downtown Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market. This recovered produce is provided, free of charge, to hunger relief organizations that serve community members in various ways: food banks, homeless outreach agencies, domestic violence shelters, transitional youth homes, veteran services, family resource centers, LGBTQ+ teen/adult/senior services, college student assistance programs, programs serving people with disabilities, and many more. Since Food Forward’s inception, our staff and thousands of dedicated volunteers have rescued 100’s of millions of pounds of fruits and vegetables. This produce helped feed millions of people across eleven Southern California counties, throughout seven states, and in tribal lands in the Southwest annually..

Position Overview: The Community Programs (CP) Intern will support and work with the Community Programs Department, which includes our Backyard Harvest, Farmers Market Recovery, and Volunteer programs. The CP Intern will gain hands-on experience in food recovery work by training and regularly leading farmers market gleans and/or fruit harvests. The intern will also learn and participate in core CP tasks to grow our volunteer base and improve our food recovery programs. These tasks may include recruiting volunteers via online or in-person outreach, engaging with fruit donors and farm vendors, improving our volunteer experience, attending community events to spread the word about Food Forward’s work, working with our data in our custom software, restocking produce recovery needs, and more.

Interns Will Learn About and Participate In:

• Leading events including delegating tasks to groups of volunteers
• Communication and presentation skills
• Seasonality of locally grown produce and fruit trees
• Hands-on experience with food security work in Southern California
• The ins and outs of working at a growing nonprofit
• Volunteer recruitment, coordination, and engagement strategies
• Community organizing and outreach methods
• Event coordination
• Data entry and interfacing with custom software
• Writing for internal and external communication
• Operational coordination and equipment maintenance

Minimum Requirements:

• Able to work in Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc.)
• Comfortable with lifting boxes of fruit/vegetables up to 50 pounds
• Comfortable working indoors on a computer and sitting in the car in traffic or in meetings as well as in varying outdoor environments like gardens, orchards, and farms in multiple weather conditions including heat and rain
• Comfortable harvesting fruit with a variety of tools
• Comfortable pushing a cart with produce at farmers markets when gleaning
• Ability to sit, stand, walk, climb stairs and ladders, bend, lift, twist, kneel, crouch, crawl, pull, push, carry, grasp, reach, and stoop as needed
• Comfortable working with speaking to and leading people from various backgrounds in multiple ways: via email, phone, and in person
• Must have a drivers license and reliable access to a vehicle
• Access to a laptop computer
• Willingness and availability to work weekends
• Must not volunteer more than 10 hours in the month prior to the internship