We seek to ensure individuals across all industries are represented in the spaces which impact their communities.
OUR MISSION
We’re the nation’s leading organization fighting to ensure all students have equitable access to professional career paths through the implementation of paid internships countrywide—especially students from historically excluded communities.
We successfully do so through:
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- Research by identifying gaps and establishing benchmarks;
- Advancing knowledge, practices and policy proposals for employers, students and governmental bodies;
- Shifting mental models by changing the narrative around who interns and the growing role of internships in today’s economy;
- Catalyzing change by activating stakeholders to take action toward ending unpaid internships.
For more information about our advocacy, please visit our sister site, Pay Our Interns Action.
Our plan
- Developing federal policy recommendations to address gaps between resources at elite institutions of higher education and minority-serving institutions, particularly their career services infrastructures.
- Identifying how schools and employers use academic credits as compensation for unpaid internships, and providing federal policy recommendations to make monetary compensation for internships the norm across the country.
- Issuing an independent survey to specify the type of industries who offer internships, and evaluate the long term impacts paid or unpaid internships have for students of color.
- Creating a database of longitudinal data resources, examining students and internships by yearly cohorts.
- Developing an Ambassador Program for individuals who want to be involved in the fight for a more equitable internship economy.
- Building our donor community, to continue to provide aid and resources like the Intern Relief Fund for people who are attempting to offset the costs of an unpaid internship.