Ricardo Rodriguez and Stephanie Dones, Friends of the Hudson River Park

Ricardo and Stephanie have both told me that working with Friends of the Hudson River Park (FOHRP) is more like being in a family than having a job. This family also happens to be very functional in that everyone in the office is extraordinarily productive and focused while at the same time supportive and caring enough so that the stress is never all consuming. FOHRP is a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization that was formed in response to legislation passed in 1999, which made way for the creation of a green waterfront corridor from the GWB at 181st street to Battery Park. Everyone involved with this organization is a member of the Hudson River Park coalition, which is an eclectic group of neighbors, activists, and businesses who have a stake in creating a healthy Hudson River waterfront ecology.

Ricardo and Steph worked over the summer with FOHRP as paid interns and both decided they wanted to continue the position into the school year even though they knew it was specifically unpaid. Their mentors Laura and Matthew have nothing but positive things to say about their contributions. The feelings are certainly mutual and Matthew and Laura should definitely be commended for providing such an outstanding level of support and attention to the academic needs of their interns. In fact everyone in the organization seems to go the extra mile. When I arrived on Tuesday, Stephanie was in the midst of conducting her interview with the organization’s director, Albert Butzel. Immediately following that, Ricardo sat down in the boardroom with the organization’s administrator, Phillip Baumgartner. Both seemed more than happy to offer detailed information toward the interns’ research.

On a typical day, Ricardo and Steph will help out on many fronts, primarily working on programming and outreach with Matthew and Laura. They have helped to organize waterfront events, such as last month’s Pier 84 inaugural celebration. I have encouraged both Ricardo and Steph to get more involved in the political advocacy aspects of FOHRP’s work. This would hopefully mean that the interns could substitute one of their afternoon’s work hours in order to attend a Wednesday community board meeting or a Hudson River Alliance meeting, which also happen on Wednesday afternoons. Ricardo seems to be more motivated to increase his involvement but I think with a little healthy peer pressure, Steph will jump on board as well. Hopefully Steph will be a little more available and energized for internship once the craziness of college applications has subsided.

Jeffrey Taveras and Sammy Lopez, Recycle-A-Bicycle Lower East Side Retail Shop

Sammy and Jeffrey are psyched about the fun and useful experience they are accumulating by working at the Recycle-A-Bicycle lower east side retail store. Sammy comes in faithfully every Tuesday and Thursday and Jeffrey only on Tuesdays. They work directly alongside two master mechanics, Rich Pinto and Joe. They are learning everything there is to know about bicycle maintenance, repair, and assembly, with the exception of disc breaks and full suspension systems, which the shop does not deal with.

RAB is a 501c3 nonprofit that receives donated used bikes in order to refurbish them for sale to the public. The mission of the organization is to educate and train young people in the art of the bicycle. Sammy and Jeffrey fit perfectly into this mission and will have the opportunity to become paid RAB mechanics upon completion of their internship. Currently, the guys are mostly focused on basic repair tasks such as flat fixes, stripping, cleaning, and brake adjustment. They are learning to do the entire refurbishing process and will soon begin to build up their own bikes.

During the meeting with Rich and Joe, we talked about the need to stay on the ball with journal writing and school based assignments. I once again reminded Sammy and Jeffrey to submit their first coworker interview, which they were planning to conduct that afternoon. They also have yet to submit the initial outline for the research paper, which may mean the difference between passing and failing economics for the second semester. We all know these guys are extremely smart, let’s just hope Tuesday’s meeting was enough to get their behinds in GEAR. (bicycle pun, but all kidding aside, hand in the work guys!)

Genesis Williams, Li and Fung Limited

Li and Fung Limited is one of the world's largest textile manufacturers and designers -- with approximately 7% of all textiles sold in the US originating in some aspect of the company's network, it is an enormous global conglomerate based in Hong Kong with offices in over 40 cities around the world. At the heart of the operation (almost) is Genesis and her mentor Tania Vega on the 20th floor of Li and Fung's New York office located on Broadway at 36th street. Tania is Vice President of Production for special projects. Basically she oversees all aspects of specialty clothing lines from preproduction design, branding, and fitting, to production management, materials sourcing, and distribution. Genesis is her right hand woman in this multi faceted world of fashion production.

When I arrived in the office on Tuesday, Genesis was hard at work behind her computer, entering data into an excel spreadsheet budget. The budget consisted of all recent expenses relating to a clothing line called Cinge that Tania has developed specifically for Li and Fung to be sold at WalMart stores in Canada and Brazil. Genesis has also helped out during fitting and modeling sessions for Li and Fung's Bloomingdales accounts and will have the opportunity to work on Levi's red tab line. All in all, this is a bustling environment with over a hundred people on five floors, separated by departments. Genesis runs between the floors on many days gathering resources and doing errands for Tania. She is becoming very well acquainted with this complex corporation and hopefully her knowledge and experience with come through clearly in the research paper she is currently working on.

The only issue that Genesis needs to be aware of, similar to other interns in this program, is consistency in attendance. She has missed internship twice without an appropriate reason. The main consequence for this besides a loss of school credit is a lack of personal momentum. Internship hours are short and infrequent, so in order to maintain trust and commitment with the mentor, it is imperative to never miss a day unless it is absolutely necessary.

Luis Melendez; Lettie G Howard, South Street Seaport Museum

Pookie has an ideal internship in and around the Lettie G Howard. His mentor is none other than the illustrious Captain Jonathan Kabak. As an NYHS student, Pookie has already had a great deal of experience sailing aboard the Lettie, mostly during our summer programs. For those who are unfamiliar, the Lettie is a tall masted schooner that was originally constructed in Massachusetts in 1893. She is currently owned and operated as an educational sailing vessel by the South Street Seaport Museum.


Pookie's internship has thus far been a purely maritime experience. Most days he works aboard the ship learning basic maintenance and engineering tasks from the crew and captain. Over the last two weeks, the main responsibility for all crew members including Pookie has been downrigging and winter storage preparations. In addition to regular maintenance duties, Pookie has also been of help within the ship's educational programs. Unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts, Pookie was not able to sail with the 9th grade Harbor class but he was there every Tuesday and Thursday to meet the class at the 79th st. Boat Basin. In the coming months, Pookie will be working directly with Kabak and Education Director Kristin Washer to help out with programming and gain insight into the educational aspect of the sailing ship.


After meeting with Kabak and Pookie, I stopped in unscheduled to the museum's education department to say hello to Juan Concepcion and his mentor Maggie. Maggie was off to a meeting and Juan was busy with his current project. They both seemed very happy with the internship experience and Juan was thoroughly engaged. I am scheduled to return for my official visit on January 18th.

Both Pookie and Juan are well supported in their research and interview process. Working at the museum, they have enormous access to primary source historical materials and tools for research. The museum staff, both administrators and educators, can provide a wealth of information for the interns if they're able to take initiative, introduce themselves, and pursue interview opportunities. It all depends on the individual's drive to seek out and investigate personally relevant information -- the process should be fun and highly motivating. It should be difficult but not boring!!

Elias Alvarez, Brooklyn Tree House

The Brooklyn Tree House is a sweet little boutique perched at the end of Graham Ave in the heart of Williamsburg, with a nice balance of hipster and "regular" new yorkers. The owner-founders Siri and Rebecca are Brooklyn based clothing and jewelry designers. They sell their own wares in the shop alongside with 24 other local artists. In addition to selling artful fashion items, the space is also host to ongoing clothing craft and design classes for the community. The space is very warm and inviting, you should check it out soon!

Siri is also a teacher of craft classes in Bushwick, which is where she met Elias. Elias set up the internship for himself and then told me about it. It was all his initiative and he seems to be learning a great deal about the field of design and small business management. The only challenge is that his two mentors have little time to spare on Thursday afternoons because like any beginning business, they have to devout all of their time together to development and promotion. Elias has been extremely helpful with day-to-day organizational tasks and creative stuff such as planning window displays.

He has also been working on his own clothing design and crafting projects, however Siri would like to be able to give him more time and attention in this respect. Toward this end, I suggested that Elias work as a helper in Siri's classes or raise money to attend as a participant. I trust that Elias and Siri will find a way to make the internship sustainable with enough attention, time, and energy to meet everyone's needs. I for one am very proud his intiative and creative spirit and I hope he keeps it going.

Denise and Maria Elizabeth

Denise Duran and Maria Elizabeth Hernandez, Long Island College Hospital: These girls are engaged in deeply challenging and energy consuming work -- they're volunteering in a hospital. This is difficult work even without the added demands of academic assignments, internship timecards, and me hovering around asking questions and snapping photos. Denise and Maria have thus far been working in the Elder Care program (HELP) set up and run by Dr. Concha Mendoza, a geriatric specialist who oversees the department and runs her own private practice at LIC. She is the girls' primary mentor but unfortunately is extremely busy on Tuesday afternoons.

On a typical day, the girls arrive at the hospital which is located near the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, and proceed to the volunteer office where they clock in to the hospital system, pick up their volunteer jackets, and receive their meal vouchers. Then they head to the main hospital building up to the fifth floor nursing ward where most elder patients stay. Dr. Mendoza and the girls communicate via a large notebook with patient names, notes and observations. The girls pick up the notebook every Tuesday and find a new list of patients and room numbers to visit. They have a list of questions they can ask, but generally they are there to provide warmth and friendliness to people who have few visitors and are in a great deal of pain. They'll also occasionally travel around the entire floor distributing water, ice, and snacks. In general, this aspect of their internship is neither glamorous nor overly exciting. During my visit today, I quickly remembered how strange it feels to walk around a hospital as a healthy person peering in on the world of sickness, powerless to do any healing.

Denise and Maria and I discussed why it must be so hard to be a really good nurse and why so many nurses often seem busy, stressed, or burnt out. Just to maintain one's own level of happiness and positive outlook walking around the sterile hallways is difficult enough, but then on top of that to make others feel better, healthy, more alive, even loved. Wow, what a task! More power to these girls for getting this first hand experience in the health care "industry."

Maria and Denise have amazing access to health care professionals. They are in fact free to introduce themselves to nurses and doctors, make connections, and ask questions that will provide them knowledge and insight on the field. Today, the girls sat down with a nurse manager on the fifth floor and conducted a 30-minute interview. Next week, they'll have the same opportunity with Dr. Mendoza, and if they want, they can make a practice out of it. Also, next week, they will both start spending two of their four hours in other departments. Maria will go to the emergency room where she will serve as an interpreter/ greeter and Denise will assist the nurses in the neonatology department. We decided today that they would both benefit from more diverse experience and the volunteer coordinator, Ms. Abreu was happy to oblige.

On a final note, next week the interns will make their way over to the college library where they will begin talking with the librarian about LICH's 150 year history and locating useful resources for the paper. Neither Denise nor Maria had asked about a library, but luckily while we were meeting in Dr. Mendoza's office, a fourth year medical student (see picture on right) happened to stop in and suggest visiting the library. This just goes to show that if you put forth just a little of your own genuine curiosity and effort, all the missing pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into your lap. Of course then it's still up to you to put the thing together. But at least now, I'm confident that the LIC interns have excellent resources at their fingertips and the potential for an outstanding internship.

Marlon Antigua, November 14

Marlon Antigua, High Five Tickets to the Arts: High Five Tickets is a small grass roots nonprofit dedicated to providing theater arts access and education for city youth. Their small yet elegant office is located at 53rd St and 5th Ave in Manhattan. According to Marlon's mentors Eric Ost and Laurel Anderson, and based on what I saw during my visit today, the office setting feels casual and community oriented yet focused and productive as any thriving NYC nonprofit. In general, this internship experience has been particularly beneficial for Marlon in pushing him to further develop his social skills and business understanding. Prior to this experience, Marlon had very little if any exposure to the world of theater arts and nonprofit educational organizations. One might say this experience is radically different from anything Marlon had done or even thought about before, and as a result there has been enormous growth. It turns out that Marlon's limited exposure and prior interest is an enormous asset for an organization that is charged with turning teenagers on to the world of theater, music, dance, and stage performance. Marlon is their target audience. With this idea in mind, Marlon's main independent project over the next several months will be take himself and one lucky friend (Genesis may have priority) to as many shows as he can get days off from his "real" job. Nothing is for nothing however. Marlon will be reviewing all performances and publsihing his written critiques on High Five's website or possibly on his own soon to be developed blog.

Aside from the grand scheme of things, Marlon plays a pivotal role in the daily workings of the education and development departments. This includes helping out the whole staff in ongoing projects, day to day clerical tasks, preparing PR folders, stuffing envelopes, emailing for events, and designing outreach media, such as flyers for open houses. All in all, Mr. Antigua seems to be appreciated by his coworkers not only for his natural charm, but because he is productive. Now let's just make sure he hands in the research paper outline and interview write-up on Friday!

Interns in the Field

Octavia Moses, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s Office: Octavia describes her internship with a shy grin as if she’s embarrassed by how much she loves it. Until Yesterday, all I had to go on was her journal entries and some brief conversations with her mentors Nan and Sandra. Octavia has been assigned to the Community Relations Department at the BP’s office, which is primarily responsible for fielding and addressing the myriad of complaints, problems, and issues that come in on daily basis directly from Brooklyn residents. On any given day, Octavia will answer the phone to as many as ten complaints, ranging from section 8 housing problems, to fallen trees to potholes, to noise pollution and the occasional “bird flew in my window and I can’t get it out” that she happened to receive while I was in the office yesterday. During the course of a call Octavia records the constituent’s information and creates an official documentation of the complaint. She then passes this directly to her supervisor and decides what the appropriate next steps will be. Octavia has also taken on the responsibility of outreach to Brooklyn based organizations in need of volunteers and community service. She calls the organizations to update contact info and discuss volunteer opportunities to list on the BP’s website. In general, her supervisors and coworkers are extremely friendly, supportive, and very appreciative of their high school intern.

Octavia has an amazing opportunity here to gain some real exposure to the interworkings of city politics. She has expressed strong interest in researching explosive political issues, such as development and health care. Specifically for her independent research paper, she plans to focus on the Atlantic Yards/ Forest City Ratner development, seeking to assemble a balanced assessment of the varying perspectives, pros, cons, and current status of the project. Her research paper should provide a very unique critical analysis of the issue – be sure not to miss her portfolio presentation along with other exciting interns from around the city January 23rd and 25th, NYHS Campus Library 1:00PM

Jennifer Lamberty, Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education: She's very supported by her mentor and staff of environmental educators and consultants. Small office with a focus on green design and sustainability. Jen is working on a major library organization project, cataloging and reviewing books and curriculum resources -- very relevant work for the organization and also for her own internship research paper. In general, she's committed and slowly opening up to the concepts and work environment.


Miguel Pedraza, GMD Shipyards: His mentor Mike Dimesa is the second in command at GMD, supervisor of quality assurance. Miguel is his right hand man, helping him design schematic diagrams for barge and tug repairs. The setting is amazing -- the last working NYC dry-docks outside of SI, 200 guys doing an assortment of welding, engineering, basic maintenance, heavy equipment operation, etc. Lots of great personalities who have been working in the industry for years. This would be a great site for us to partner with as a new career and technical high school. Overall Miguel is a superstar intern -- he provides the organization a valuable service and can handle himself in any environment they put him in. On the other hand, he needs lots of pushing to complete journal and research assignments from school.


Hector Acevedo, Bridgman Art Library: Hector is working in a small NYC branch office of an international art publishing and licensing company. He is well liked and very helpful to his mentor, so much so that they decided to give him a food and travel stipend. This obviously provides him extra incentive to be consistent. His regular duties include internet based copyright infringement research, clerical duties, and some errands. The office is small and he feels a little isolated spending many hours at his desk and computer workstation. He needs encouragement to explore the art history field and gain background knowledge. He is handling the independent work and making the most out of his time, which he does in part by making himself several cups of coffee each day.


Christine Monserrat, Bushwick Impact: After a rocky start, Christine has actually begun to enjoy her internship. What really drives this internship is the close-knit personal relationships with her mentor and coworkers. Bushwick Impact is small nonprofit offshoot of ACT NYC which provides outreach services to local parents, helping them to procure daycare and early childhood education, health care, housing, and even employment. Christine is developing her own long-term project in which she will conduct an outreach program specifically targeted to teen parents. She is getting ready to do outreach at local schools and encourage teen parents to come to the office on regular basis to benefit from the education and health care resources. In general, she seems happy but still expresses concerns about dealing with travel in the cold weather.


David Peralta and Joshua Duran, Environmental Defense: David and Joshua initially complained a lot that their internship was boring or somehow they were being exploited as filing slaves. This may have been partly true in the first two weeks as they were settling in, but as far as I can tell after my visit last week this not at all the case. Environmental Defense is the largest environmental nonprofit in the country, focusing on political advocacy, legislation, and some conservation trusts. The NYC office is a spectacular 4-floor space full of light and busy bright-eyed people working on issues they really care about. In addition to the diverse staff, David and Joshua work alongside 7 other interns (all girls) from two other small high schools. David's mentor runs the donor records department -- he has been working with the database management system and his personal project focuses on developing a new system for tracking matching gifts from large companies. He is exposed to the finance systems of this large nonprofit. Joshua works for two women who run the organization's website -- he has been updating and uploading news articles relating to oceans. His ongoing project has been the development of an excel spreadsheet comparing energy efficient light bulbs -- he may develop similar consumer tools for other home appliances and green technology. In general, both interns don't quite realize how good they've got it. They've been told that ED historically offers summer jobs to successful interns. ED provides ample resources for their academic assignments and though their mentors are busy and need help with clerical tasks, they are very supportive. Now it's just a matter of the interns stepping up and taking advantage of their coworkers and resources.



Jacob Constantino, Timothy Romero, and Romano Belgrave, NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign: A challenging internship for these three guys because they spend at least half of their site time riding the trains to compile the data for NYPIRG's annual subway report. The research process is concrete and they are helping. My main concern is that they are not sufficiently engaged in other aspects of the organization. They have learned how to write a press release and phone bank to media outlets but all in all they seem somewhat lost. Their mentor Charity Carbine is well intentioned but busy. The department consists of two people, including Charity. The subway report is a great project in that they will see it develop from start to finish in the springtime. I am working with Charity to set up work for them in other NYPIRG departments to diversify the experience and hopefully make it more engaging.


Victor Rosario, Cornell University Cooperative Extension: Victor is an outstanding intern at an outstanding internship site with an outstanding mentor, seriously. He is working under Lisa Babcok and Gretchen Ferenz (Tom Fox's wife), in the education department. His ongoing project is an outreach database to south Bronx elementary and middle school teachers. The organization offers environmental Ed PD and in this case Victor is promoting a program called Garden Mosaics. He is mapping school locations within a specific congressional district where the program's funding originates and then will be conducting phone outreach and eventually participating in the PD workshops at schools and Garden sites. His mentors are very grateful to have him and he is taking full advantage of the experience. They've been helping him with college apps and discussing how they might help him get in to Hunter. All in all, both sides are investing great amounts of time and energy in the partnership which will hopefully serve for years to come.



Yoscar Ogando, Scholastic Inc: Yoscar has another "ideal" internship. His mentor is an old friend of mine who is now a program manager for Scholastic's education technology department. Their main focus has been the development and testing of educational software such as Read 180. Currently, Yoscar spends two hours per day helping to set up and run an after school pilot program at the Scholastic store in Soho. The program is run by a teacher and gets middle school students and their parents to use the software programs that Yoscar's department has developed. On other days, Yoscar helps his mentor Isaac with ongoing database and clerical projects. By far the most exciting part of this internship is Yoscar's ongoing independent work, which consists of researching a new internet based game system that Scholastic wants to develop in combination with a book and card series. The game would be interactive, fantasy/role play, building literacy and fun at the same time. This kind of project has never been done before and Yoscar is at the forefront. His research is published on an in-house wikipedia system in which all project members post findings and discuss new ideas. In general, Yoscar is very psyched to have this opportunity.



Jessica Mendez, Jose Rueda, Lariza Gomez, Bideawee Inc: As many have seen from the bulletin board pics, the Bideawee interns are getting very technical hands-on experience in the field of veterinary medicine. The Bideawee staff is very friendly and supportive of the interns learning experience. Lariza and Jessica have been very consistent and have established very respectful relationships with their coworkers. Jose has for the most part done the same; however I did get a report that Jose was asking some strange questions about drugs and cancer, openly expressing his morbid curiosity that we all know well. He has also been absent twice without reporting to his mentor. As a result he is on his last chance and will hopefully pull it back together. Even with Jose's issues, the interns are collectively doing great. They assist with surgeries and major medical treatments on Tuesdays. They also wash animals and do daily medical rounds for the cats and dogs awaiting adoption. I've been asking their mentor, Dianne Alexander (clinic manager) to provide the interns some exposure to the business management side of the organization. Bideawee was founded in 1908 and has a rich history. Currently the organization occupies an entire four floor building on the Upper East Side.


Starrie Thomas, Urban Spring Cafe and Juice Bar: I've been able to check in on Starrie several times and get regular reports from her mentor because she is interning around the corner from my house, literally. Her mentor, Gordon Kindlon is the owner of a newly opened juice bar and cafe on deKalb and Carlton. Before the juice bar, Gordon and his wife worked for the UN in Afghanistan and Iraq for four years. He opened the business with the intention of promoting green design/renewable technologies to local businesses and community. Starrie is of course helping to run the everyday aspects of the business, which includes learning how to make all the menu items, work the register, restock and order items. Everything in the place is organic and or renewable/recycled. This is itself good exposure for Starrie, but even with a free lunch and smoothie everyday, she is still "bored" at times. The idea for Starrie's independent project is for her to create a marketing program for local high school students (Brooklyn Tech), develop some educational advertising to bring the students up to the juice bar for an after school special. Gordon also has plans for her to help him run elementary school workshops later in the year. According to Gordon, Starrie is a great worker but as we all know has some barriers in her personality. She is reserved and reluctant to communicate at times, but Gordon recognizes that this is the main challenge of working with any high school kid, especially one as unique as Starrie Thomas, and he's psyched to keep innovating.


Wilfredo Garcia and Jimmy Sanchez, NY Water Taxi: These guys love their internship mainly because they know they're gaining skills and moving up in the ranks in a way that could not have happened working only as paid employees. I was originally concerned that their internship would not offer new specialized experience, but this is not the case at all, mostly because their internship site is the Red Hook homeport of all Water Taxi ships as opposed to collecting tickets and working as deckhands. Most of their hours are spent with ship and port engineers learning regular maintenance and repairs. Rob Wall, their primary mentor, has been busy with season-end projects until last week, and as of now will begin to introduce the interns to the management/financial side of the company. They've scheduled interviews with coworkers and next week will be sitting down for a company vision talk with founder Tom Fox. This discussion will also include info on the Atlantic basin proposal, which these guys have taken a special interest in as Harbor seniors. The homeport office is small but does provide workstations for two interns. Wilfredo and Jimmy are excelling while Kereem and Ali are less consistent, with the majority of the concern being on Ali. The day I visited neither Kereem nor Ali was present. We need to keep encouraging all of the Water Taxi interns to stay on the ball with research, interviews, journaling and timecards.