It’s amazing how a good snowfall can quiet a city down. It may not be as serene as a natural landscape, but it reminds you that nature still exists in a setting that has been almost completely altered by man. It’s easy to forget about the environment when you live in a city, but I’m sure that’s not a problem for the people at the Environmental Law Institute. It’s a Washington, DC based non-profit organization that “makes law work for people, places, and the planet.” That’s an important role because environmental health is a public good that can be ruined by the actions of a few. Environmental changes can have all kinds of externalities, so it’s important that our legal system is set up in a way that promotes “a healthy environment, prosperous economies, and vibrant communities.”
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If you’re thinking about a Media internship, then you need to take a look at the Washington Media Scholars Case Competition. It will prepare you to succeed in your internship, and you can even win a $3,000 scholarship.
On Friday we took a look at Voxiva, a company that uses mobile technology to help people make simple behavioral changes to improve their health. They’re a for-profit company that is using creative ways to encourage behavioral change to better the world. Global Inheritance is a non-profit that is taking a similar approach, but doing so in a very different way. The Los Angeles, CA based organization develops “unique initiatives [that] focus on the power of creativity to communicate issues with audiences that need a kick in the butt.” The audiences that they’re talking about seem to be largely those at concerts and festivals, but it could be anywhere where young people congregate (and that includes online communities).
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Generally, we as a society trust scientists. We see them as unbiased and smarter than us, so we look to them when we need answers to complex questions. However, we often don’t respond to those answers as well as we should. Part of the problem is that science is ever changing—what was thought to be true last year has now been updated (or reversed) based on new research. When you have different experts on the same subject saying different things, you as a layperson don’t know whom to listen to. But when scientists come together on an issue and vocally push for action, it’s time to listen. The Union of Concerned Scientists is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1969 “by a group of scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to protest the militarization of scientific research and promote science in the public interest.” They’re based in Cambridge, MA, and they are “now an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists” with members “from all walks of life: parents and businesspeople, biologists and physicists, teachers and students.”
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Sometimes it seems that I’m destined to cover a company or organization. Their name will just keep popping up wherever I look. That seems to be the case with StudentsFirst, a Washington, DC based non-profit organization that was “formed in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better education system in America.” I’d already come across them a few times when a reader recommended that I check out the organization, and then they popped up in one of my friends’ Facebook statuses. That was enough for me to take a closer look. StudentsFirst is a grassroots movement “designed to mobilize parents, teachers, students, administrators, and citizens throughout country, and to channel their energy to produce meaningful results on both the local and national level.” Unlike many non-profit organizations in the education space that are focused on working at the school level, StudentsFirst is more about activism and advocacy. They believe that building a movement is the key to improving educational outcomes across the United States.
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Having looked at as many non-profit internships as I have over the past three years, I must admit that many of the organizations start to blend together. It happens with companies too, but I feel as though there is distinctly less uniqueness in the non-profit world—maybe because competition affects the “marketplace” very differently when it comes to non-profits. It just seems that there are many organizations that fill similar niches. When I came across the Hip Hop Caucus, it stood out from the pack—probably based on the organization’s name alone—they just sound different. They’re a Washington, DC based non-profit organization that “aims to promote political activism for young U.S. voters using hip-hop music and culture.” Culture is always a great tool for pushing change forward, and hip hop culture is especially vibrant.
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