Student Part-time Internship Call for Interest

Looking for a chance to make a difference while developing your skills?

Background 

Nova Scotia is in a period of rapidly rising costs. The cost of housing and cost of living has led to a tightening of budgets for food, and students are facing pressures to be able to meet their basic needs. Student unions have reported a consistent increase in student reliance on food banks and some campuses are experiencing a mismatch between student’s cultural food preferences and the availability of culturally relevant foods on university campuses.

Nova Nourishment will give student interns an opportunity to explore potential solutions!

What is Nova Nourishment?

A project which hires students to assess the state of food sovereignty and food security on their respective campuses, and to develop solutions to those issues!

Your Dal AC Sandbox, Cultiv8, will hire 4 interns to:

1. assess the state of food sovereignty and security and identify key issues on campus.
2. to build (prototype) and test potential solutions to those issues.

Key areas of focus for the prototyping internship include:

• Enhancing student food security
• Addressing food sovereignty for students
• Exploring how students can have access to culturally relevant foods.
• Testing different approaches to ensuring availability of affordable food options on-campus
• Addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility issues related to food security and food sovereignty.

What is a Nova Nourishment Internship?

A part-time work opportunity which runs for the entire 2023/2024 school year.. 

Pay and required time investment: $20 per hour, 10 hours per week for 24 weeks (Weekend Event will include 10 hours of pay).  Total time commitment:

• Fall semester, week (Mon – Sun) of Sept 25^th to week of Nov 27
• Weekend Event: Oct 27 - Oct 29 afternoon (food, accommodation and transportation provided)
• Winter semester, week of Jan 8th to and including week of April 1st.

With focus on the question “How might we build food security and sovereignty for students on our campus?”, the internship commitment will be to learn, apply, and integrate innovation theories and methodologies by designing and testing solutions specifically for students on your campus.

Interns will work in a team of 4, will have the opportunity to develop new skills and test creative solutions to food security and sovereignty problems that matter for students, and they will connect and learn from teams from other campuses tackling similar issues.

Takeaways from the Internship

• $20/hour wage for 10 hours per week for 24 weeks (as outlined above)
• Grow your network – diverse professional contacts for your future of work.
• Skills development and awareness enhancement in:
  • Complexity theory
  • Systems thinking
  • Human-centered design thinking
  • Developmental evaluation
  • Participatory leadership
  • Decolonial practice

Who should apply?

You should apply if …

• You are excited to learn innovative problem-solving methods to more effectively tackle complex social problems.
• You embrace being pushed outside your comfort zone and are open to change.
• The challenges associated with food security and sovereignty for students interest you.
• Working with people who have a diversity of perspectives and skills excites you.
• You will actively participate in all aspects of the project.
• You are willing to devote 10 quality hours per week for the duration of the project to this employment opportunity.

Key to the effectiveness of the team is a group whose participants each take lead on one of Storytelling and Communications, Evidence and Evaluation, Engagement and Networking, and Ideation and Prototyping:

• Storytelling and Communications: this role will provide leadership through sharing the learning journey and communicating with the broader community. This may involve developing compelling stories about what is being learned and tried by the team. It may involve testing different methods and mediums to reach different audiences. This role also takes on being the learning historian for the group by regularly communicating broadly and documenting what the team is doing and learning. This role will love sharing what is happening – the good, the bad, the ugly and beautiful – in ways that will make people pay attention!
• Evidence and Evaluation: this role provides leadership to the team in evidence gathering and discerning, and in evaluating the impact of the work of the team. This may include supporting the team in interviewing students and making sense of all they have heard. It will also include evaluation of prototype testing results and making decisions about what is next. This role will love to look at the evidence and what it means for next steps to make the biggest impact possible!
• Engagement and networking this role provides leadership to the team in ensuring engagement with the student population and other relevant stakeholders as well as networking with possible collaborators or contributors. A good team seeks out support from others who may have expertise, knowledge, and skills they don’t possess. This role will not be afraid to make cold calls and talk to strangers!
• Ideation and prototyping this role will provide leadership to the team during the ideation and prototyping process. This involves challenging the team to generate new and useful ideas. It will involve pushing the team to make their ideas a reality quickly and early so they can be tested with students and others. It involves maintaining a culture of experimentation and freedom to fail with the team. This role will keep the creativity flowing!

Applications closed. Stay tuned for select interns doing amazing work!