CALLING ALL ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERS!

The Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization, Inc. (MEVO) is recruiting for its 2013 Summer Crew Season.  MEVO is an environmental not-for-profit organization lead by college and high school students and works every day to create environmental sustainability throughout Northern New Jersey communities.  We are looking for people who are passionate, friendly, and independent-thinkers that want to volunteer throughout local communities to change the suburbs to be ecological and sustainable.  MEVO’s Summer Crew is a group of passionate college and high school interns that volunteer throughout the summer carrying out a huge array of environmental sustainability projects from trash clean-ups and hiking trail building to distributing recycling bins and building organic farms.  Any good crew NEEDS a GREAT CREW LEADER.  We are looking for an individual who wants to lead a crew of 5 - 15 college and high school students in hands on physical volunteer work and administrative not-for-profit management.  This person should consider themselves passionate, friendly, and an independent thinker.  They should be comfortable making serious decisions, teaching and having patience with different types of people, and showing confidence even in the direst of situations.  This person should have experience in at least one of these areas: leadership, not-for-profit volunteer work, environmental work, teaching, or community organizing.  This is an internship for someone who wants to take the next step in his or her career and get some serious experience doing real important environmental sustainability work.  Experience leading groups of people, launching programs, projects, or entrepreneurial ventures are opportunities that will show us if you are right for the position.   In this internship you will spend half of your day outdoors with your crew building hiking trails, maintaining organic farms, distributing recycling bins to local communities, and meeting with community members to engage more local residents in environmental sustainability and building solutions to local and global environmental problems.  The second half of your day you will bring your crew back to our office and spend time developing and researching new environmental sustainability projects, outreaching to local community groups, and getting hands on experience managing a not-for-profit organization from social media and website development to recruiting partners and grant applications.  You will be working directly with other long-term MEVO staff and the Executive Director to plan the summer and develop your steps on carrying out the program.  It is a hands-on learning experience that provides you the support of an environmental not-for-profit organization but also allows you the freedom to create, develop, and implement environmental solutions on a local level.  Our crew NEEDS a LEADER and we hope that leader is you.

The Crew Leader begins their internship approximately 1 to 1.5 months before May.  This does not mean you have to be in New Jersey in April, it means that as a Crew Leader you need to do preemptive planning, development, and input into the program for the summer of 2013, so that you can kick off the summer with a bang! This preemptive work will be done through phone meetings, occasional in-person meetings, and e-mailing depending on what type of projects we decide to do and your location prior to May. 

The crew will start in the beginning of May and end at the end of August as a Crew Leader you need to lead for the entire summer.  This is an unpaid part-time internship three days a week, all of our past summer crew leaders have had paid-jobs in addition to their internship with MEVO.  However, if you are interested in having a full-time Summer Crew internship more than three days a week, it is 100% possible and should be mentioned in your application.   This internship can be used for academic credit and we are always willing to hear requests for custom schedules for internships or volunteer work.

Responsibilities

Leading, inspiring, and teaching: The Summer Crew will be made up of college and high school students from a variety of backgrounds.  They are doing this crew because they want to learn about environmental sustainability and not-for-profit work.  As the leader, you have to teach these crewmembers all that you know on helping the environment and engaging people in volunteering.  We want you to inspire your crewmembers with a passion to make a difference for the environment and in the world.

Managing the program and projects: As the person in charge of the summer crew, you will be responsible for completing all of the projects you and MEVO staff plan for the summer.  Building organic farms, picking up trash, and building hiking trails are all projects you will be in charge of leading.  If you do not have experience doing these types of specific projects, have no fear, we will teach you anything you do not know how to do.  However, once we teach you we expect you to lead these projects, manage your crew, and make sure the jobs are done.

Physical volunteering and getting dirty: Half of each day will be spent outdoors volunteering on a wide array of environmental projects.  You will build hiking trails, clean-up trash and tires from local forests, and build organic farms and that is just a small example.  In addition, you will go on hikes with your fellow crewmembers and spend A LOT of your summer outdoors!  We value having both volunteer and administrative experience, so each internship day will be filled with both.

E-mailing, phone calling, and meeting:  The second half of your day is administrative volunteer work in our office.  You will get a huge amount of experience e-mailing, phone calling, and meeting with public officials from all spectrums of our communities, important township mayors and not-for-profit executive directors to local community members.  As a Summer Crew Leader, you and your crew will meet with community members for many reasons from funding and donations to discussing local environmental issues and collaborating on a volunteer project.

Public speaking and making decisions:  As a crew leader, you will need to serve as an example to your crewmembers.  You will have to teach them to make decisions and be confident speaking in front of groups of people of all ages.  There is no better way to teach your crewmembers this, than by leading by example.  This means you need to be able to speak in front of groups and make decisions without other MEVO staff there to help you.  From day 1, you will need to speak in front of people and start making serious decisions about summer plans and project implementation.  A crew leader must be comfortable doing both of these things already.

Requirements

Passionate, friendly, and independent thinkers: These types of characteristics help to make a difference in the world and to be able to work with different types of communities and people.  You may feel like you have some but not all of these characteristics, that are fine, but you need to express to use why you are the fit for the job.  As a leader, we need you to serve as an example for your crewmembers an example that they want to follow.  These characteristics we feel build strong leaders.

Mode of transportation: MEVO operates throughout North Jersey, which means during the internship we will travel throughout this greater area.  As a Crew Leader, you need a car.  We carpool for most days so we never need as many cars as crew members  but as a Crew Leader throughout the day you will be moving from place to place probably more often than your crew members.  You will be preparing job sites, meeting with special community members, or even driving someone to the hospital if they are injured (although this had never happened).  As a leader, you need to have a car to be able to manage and be in control of all possible situations and have the most resources for solutions to any issues.

Attending Volunteer Events:  MEVO started with the belief that if you take action and volunteer in your community you can make a huge difference for the environment.  We were founded four years ago with a trash clean-up lead by a group of High School students, and since then we have planned over 70 different volunteer events engaging over 340 people in over 18,000 hours of volunteer work.  From trash clean-ups to tree plantings, MEVO does it all!  MEVO’s Earth Crew plans three to four environmental volunteer events every month; they are on Saturday or Sunday.  As a crew leader, you and your members are required to go to a minimum of two a month.  We need as many people as possible - there is a lot of environmental degradation to stop!

Willingness to get hands dirty and do physical labor: We volunteer for the environment!  This means we spend a lot of our time outdoors in nature and communities creating environmental sustainability.  You will definitely get dirty and the work will be tiring so a willingness to do physical labor and make a difference with your own bare hands is necessary.  Approximately half of every internship day is physical volunteer work.

Taking your work home with you: We are a local community not-for-profit organization, which means we are always connected and involved with any community we work with.  That means that you have to take your work home with you: e-mails you send, phone calls you make, do not just stay at the office.  People will e-mail and call you back at all hours of the day all days a week, no matter if you are in the office or not.  You need to be willing to respond to these people and work on MEVO projects even when you are not in the office, a lot of our work is time sensitive and for the whole summer, you will be connected with your internship and your crewmembers.

Working Laptop or access to one: Our office work requires a laptop that you can use.  You need a laptop because MEVO does not have the funding to provide you with one, although we can provide you with electricity to charge it.  If you are a member of the summer crew, you need a laptop so that you can work on your projects big and small and stay engaged in the work we are doing.  Sorry, but hand written letters just are not a way to get things done quickly and we are running out of time!!!!

To apply fill out the online application process on this website…

OR contact Eric J. Fuchs-Stengel by e-mail at ericjfs@mevoearth.org or cell phone 201-316-4888.  You should send your resume and cover letter.  Phone calls are totally fine if you want to introduce yourself before submitting your information or if you want to ask questions! ask away!