We love our interns! Each year, a handful of dedicated graduate and/or undergraduate students help keep Valley Food & Farm running smoothly. Please consider joining us for an educational, fun, and thoughtful internship or work-study that will truly make a difference in the success of farming in this region.

We design individual jobs (10-40 hours/week) based on your interest and experience with food & farms & office work. We welcome interns at all levels of experience. Call or email to set up an interview.

Projects vary according to season, needs, and what our interns have to offer, but have included:

• Farm to Dartmouth Project
  Help DDS continue to buy even more foods grown on area farms. Promote to students. We need more video taken and an editor of our rough video footage of the project.
• Valley Food & Farm Guide
  We put out a great annual publication, including info and photos about local farmers, restaurants and stores and farmers’ markets where people can buy locally grown foods. Going to farmers’ markets, stores & restaurants and distributing them all over the region is a fun, social project all summer & fall.
• Office Assistance
  Are you good at data entry, organizing, mailing, etc? You don't have to know anything about farms.
• Photography
  Taking beautiful photos of farms, farmers, and foods for VF&F's future publications.
• Interviews
  Interviewing farmers for VF&F's future publications.
• Local Ag E-Bulletin
  Research/support for e-mail local ag bulletin to 1500+ subscribers every 2 weeks. Includes what’s in season right now and how to get it, links to conferences, workshops, farm tours.
• And so many more projects connecting people to farms.

We work with students to make sure their internships meet their educational needs, and we offer supervision, feedback, referrals and references. Students can also participate in weekly all-staff meetings at Vital Communities and learn about how a successful, community-based non-profit works.

Support Available to Interns:

• Supervision by Valley Food & Farm Coordinator and additional staff
• Overview of Vital Communities , a non-profit community based organization
• Creative molding of internship focus to meet educational needs of participant
• Periodic meetings of Valley Food & Farm staff
• Participation as desired in all-staff meeting at Vital Communities
• Referrals and references to possible future job opportunities in field

General Expectations regarding work at Vital Communities :

• Understands and supports the mission of Vital Communities as expressed by Board
• Greets the public through all channels of communication with courtesy and respect
• Works in a safe manner and reports any safety hazards to Executive Director
• Maintains individual work station and office in clean, attractive manner
• Practices good work habits of flexibility, efficiency, punctuality, dependability, confidentiality, and resource utilization
• Strives to upgrade old skills and learn new ones
• Employs good communication skills by sharing information, listening to others, giving positive input
• Works as a team member by helping others and making suggestions for improvements

References:
These past interns can tell you how much we love working with Dartmouth students!

Mark Hoipkemier ’07, Kristen Blanchette ’07, Ashley Hetrick ’07, Dan Bailin ’05, Julia Payne ’05, Thorn Chen ’07, Cat Crandall, Brenna Hughes ’08, Anna Guenther, Sarah Hackney ’06, Juliette Tang ‘07

Contact Lisa at 802-291-9100 ext.103 or lisa@vitalcommunities.org to find out more about interning with Valley Food & Farm