Leah Huffington

What organization did you work with?

PDX Alliance for Self Care in Portland Oregon, USA

What did you do at your internship?

I worked as a Community Impact Intern in Food Justice & Sovereignty for the PDX Alliance For Self-Care in Portland, Oregon. My duties included performing an independent research project, maintaining digital files, and developing the nonprofit’s educational youth programming surrounding urban gardening, food sovereignty, and land stewardship. Additionally, I also assisted with volunteering recruitment efforts and participated in grant writing workshops for emergency and natural disaster preparedness and relief.

How did Lewis & Clark’s Career Center support you in finding, securing, and/or funding your internship?

The Career Center’s Racial Justice Intern Program helped connect me with PDX Alliance for Self-Care with a virtual Zoom interview. The Center’s staff were generous with their time and patience as they helped me with paperwork and forms before the start of my internship. Additionally, the program was able to provide me with a stipend to fund my internship, thus allowing me to pursue racial justice work with more compensation than most individuals in nonprofit organizations.

What is your biggest takeaway from your internship?

The biggest takeaway from my internship is the importance of establishing a nonhierarchical, collaborative volunteering environment to fuel resistance against oppression. Social justice work demands physical, mental, and emotional commitment; thus, building a community of volunteers and clients is essential to promoting racial justice and equity. Additionally, given the impact which social justice work has on the psyche, one must exercise self-care because there will always be work to be done. Social justice work is a marathon, not a sprint.

How is this internship connected to your career goals and/or future aspirations?

The nonprofit’s emphasis on providing inclusive, accessible, and intersectional self-care resources to vulnerable community members is connected to my career goals. Ultimately, the opportunity to promote self-management education and food security amongst BIPOC folx in urban settings would not have been possible without their immense support. I feel that this internship also broadened my perspective on the possibilities for cooperative leadership as I learned to consider all people’s learning and accessibility needs to foster a more equitable future for today’s youth.

Last thoughts:

This program allowed me to explore the intersectionality of poverty and race within urban settings. Additionally, I have learned so much about the hardships and funding challenges of small nonprofit organizations and community organizing work amid the battle against COVID-19. I was impressed with the determination and resiliency of the practitioners, volunteers, and board members of the PDX Alliance for Self-Care, for they continuously strived to address the daily needs of the vulnerable communities that are not sustained by the government.