Nurturing & Ownership -- An Intern's Experience At Spark-Y

Hi My name is Rola Cao, a rising-sophmore student from Macalester College and I am the Curriculum and Training Intern at Spark-Y in summer of 2022. My internship lasted 11 weeks from end of May to mid-August and it is my first ever in-person full-time internship.

Internship Overview

During my internship, I provided and supervised 12 high school youth with hands-on experiences that lead to empowerment 3+ days a week. On the past 6 professional development days, I developed, planned, and facilitated activities for Spark-Y Summer Annual Internship that include: career exploration, resume writing, leadership skills, career readiness for high school + aged youth.

Besides my role in summer internship planning, I was also on the team of impact measurement and curriculum design. With my ArcGIS cartography skills, I created an impact map to visualize the range of Spark-Y programs throughout St. Paul, Minneapolis, and greater Twin Cities area. Moreover, during the course of 8 weeks, I developed two lessons on the topic of environmental justice from scratch and hopefully they will be used in high school classrooms this fall.

Why Spark-Y

Looking back at my internship journey, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work at Spark-Y as a full-time intern. As a college student exploring career options, what Spark-Y provided me exceeded my expectations for an internship. Spark-Y is such a resourceful organization that offered me a variety of working experiences ranging from hands-on activities to strategic plannings. I was able to choose from the tasks and build my internship task bank which maximizes my advantages and challenges my comfort zone. I absolutely love the flexibility of Spark-Y which allowed me to try out new experiences, rotate in different roles, and choose the tasks that suit me the most. New ideas and proposals are welcomed here for further discussion and feedback which eventually led me to making new maps and designing new lesson plans based on my personal interest and skills. I appreciate the diversity in the Spark-Y team and the diverseness of its partnerships. As a non-profit organization, Spark-Y not only gave me the opportunity to learn more about community organizations like Project Sweetie Pie and Minneapolis Farmer’s Market, it also gave me the chance to connect with people from corporations like Cargill, Medtronic, and General Mill. Before this internship, if you tell me I will be visiting the corporation's office and inviting their senior staff to join the youth empowerment events I planned from scratch, I wouldn’t believe it. But now, walking out of this internship, I have more confidence in communication, networking, and business etiquettes than I was before.

Two Key Words

When I was asked what word would I use to describe the highlight and the challenge of this internship, I said the words “Nurturing” and “Ownership”.

Almost all work at Spark-Y circles around nurturing youth and nurturing the environment. Essentially, by nurturing youth how to nurturing plants and the community, we are empowering youth through the concept of sustainability. It is delightful and rewarding to witness the growth and progress on our youth. A big portion of my role is to find out how to nurture youth in professional development and career readiness. I tailored the professional development day to be more engaging for youth by increasing interactive activities. Moreover, in the process of nurturing our youth, I am also being nurtured by the Spark-Y family. I see tasks as learning opportunity instead of work that has to be done. By each week, I grew in both confidence and skills; Now, by the end of my internship, I am equipped with a variety of transferable career skills that are ready to be applied in my next workplace. Spark-Y work culture gave me so much flexibility and positive energy which encouraged me to take the most out of this internship.

As the key word for challenge, “ownership” summarized how I reached out of my comfort zone and transformed in the process of my internship. Spark-Y family gave me lots of trust and guidance which helped me succeed as the lead for professional development program. English is my second language and working in a full-English environment can be challenging, especially when my work is large involved in public speaking, communication outreach, and team collaborations. Taking the ownership of my work is the promise to take initiative, be creative, and implement the plan with the team support. Now I can see myself capable of leading a small team and execute high quality events.

On the Right Track

Hello Spark-Y Family!

We are the Right Track Summer Internship Team which consists of Jaraide Dassovi (Lead), Navious Bogan, Best Yang, and Eh Ler Vang. This summer our team was responsible for 3 general projects, Harold Mezile YMCA North, STEM Saturday and Harvest Best Academy! Outside of these projects, we’ve had a blast on the field trip to Lake Bde Maka Ska and enhancing our professional development skills in weekly sessions. Meet our team members and the experiences that impacted us most!

Hello my name is Best Yang an intern at Spark-Y that started working this summer.

Here at Spark-Y we work to benefit and help the community so that they can learn about STEM and planting in general. Earlier this summer me and some of my co-workers went to City Hall to plant some flowers at the entrance of the building.

City Hall asked if we could help them by planting some new flowers at the front door of the building. When me and my coworkers were told about the plans to plant flowers at City Hall I was feeling excited to go there because I never went to City Hall in my entire life before until now. When we went to City Hall it was a very hot day out in the sun with little to no shade to hide under. By the end of the day we were all tired being out in the sun and just wanted to go to an area with AC.

This project helps the city in the long run by making sure that pollinators like bees will stick around the area and have pollen and nectar to feed on. I believe that by doing this I can help pollinators by providing pollen and nectar. Something that I learned from this is how to plant flowers because I never planted one before. Also by making pollinator  gardens you are providing resources to pollinators which will help them accomplish the great work they do! - Best Yang

Hello my name is Navious Bogan and I'm a summer intern for Spark-Y. During the Bde Maka Ska field trip, I learned how to canoe in under 20 minutes. I faced my fear of being in the middle of a large body of water. In my time while working for Spark-Y I did a wide variety of things, I planted at the City Hall, and maintained the YMCA aquaponics systems this system is located at Harold Mezile North Community YMCA. I cleaned out the system and tested the water to make sure everything was okay.  One of my favorite projects was the Cargill project where volunteers help build STEM kits. The STEM kits that were being built were the zombie apocalypse, there used for building vegetables such as Broccoli,Pea, and more. This project was held at Cargill, Inc. in Wayzata, MN.

 - Navious bogan

”It was very hot” - Eh Ler 

Building Joy

This season Spark-Y reached a more dynamic age range 1st-8th grade. Our summer programming focused on bridging environmental stewardship with a healthy lifestyle. We incorporated this education by engaging the scholars in agricultural practices and lessons on a small scale, such as gardening and understanding the cultural and nutritional value of fresh produce. One of the most popular lessons being produce dissections!

One of the deliverables for the Summer Internship Right Track Team is to design and build a school garden at Harvest Best Academy. We have spent a total of 4 days building this raised bed. Most days were bright and sunny but we did get rained on twice! It has been a joy watching the Right Track Interns learn new, or enhance, their hard skills working with tools such as drills and learning how to assemble a build using a blueprint. As we wrap up this build, we are happy to say the Special Education Department will be utilizing the garden during the 2022-23 school year! Thank you to the Community Education Team Summer Interns and Jordan Bergstrom, Spark-Y Sustainable Systems Manager, for their support and infectious enthusiasm to complete this project! - Grace Cisneros, Sustainability Educator and Right Track Staff Lead.

Gardens, Seed Library, Budgets & a Sprinkler

We are the Northeast Gardens Internship Team, which is made up of Sarah, our staff lead, Solana, our apprentice lead, Olya, our assistant apprentice, and high school interns Mila, Lydia, Finn, Rey and Jaymee. We have been having so much fun and are learning so much about gardening, building, and working together! This post is collaboratively written by all of the team members to showcase to you all what we have been up to. I, Solana, have learned so much about leading a group and initiating collaboration between the high schoolers, as well as project management and communication. This has been an amazing summer for me, and for the interns. Keep reading to hear from the interns about their experience and how our summer has been spent!

Project Overviews

Hey! My name is Finn Bender, and I’m an intern for Spark-Y. In my free time I enjoy gardening. Throughout the summer our group has continued to maintain and fix both the Holland Basin and the Edison High School Garden. We also designed and are building a seed library that will be donated to the community. The seed library project has been super cool to work on and build. Below, my teammates Mila and Lydia will dive deeper into our deliverables.

Holland Basin Seed Library

Hi readers! This summer we (aka the awesome NE gardens team) have collaborated to create a seed library. The project started when we flew ideas back and forth to each other in room 107. First it was a little library. Then we wanted to make it more sustainable so we (with the help of pinterest) had to do a seed library and voila, the Spark-Y seed library was born. With the help of our apprentice and staff leader, Solana and Sarah, our intern team added more designs to both a whiteboard and a 3D model. With a planter top, slanted roof, and a bowl with misc. seeds, our library design was finally finished. 

- Written by intern, Lydia Johnson

Holland Basin Maintenance

During our internship, our group took up the task of maintaining the Holland Basin Rain Garden. The Holland Basin was originally built by the City of Minneapolis in the early 2000’s as a flood relief basin for NE Minneapolis. The rain garden, planted in 2021 at the middle of the Basin, treats stormwater as it slowly infiltrates back into the soil, cleaning the water before it flows to the Mississippi River. The native plants planted in the Basin have only had around a year to establish their roots to prepare for potentially intense flooding. Our job this summer was to thoroughly weed and water the Holland Basin Rain Garden to help prepare the plants for when they're “on the job”. Although weeding in the blazing sun for hours on end was tiring and very hot, it was never boring. Running through sprinklers and frequent water breaks kept us cool and energized, and stories, games, and spontaneous running races kept us in high spirits. Though, if you ever walk by the basin, you may notice that the garden is especially well weeded under the shade of the bridge. Gloves, rakes, shovels, and weeding knives, as well as help and guidance from our Apprentice, Solana, and Spark-Y Staff member, Jordan, made maintaining The Holland Basin Rain Garden a great hands-on learning experience.

- Written by intern, Mila Beitz

EHS Garden - Rey Siasoco

My name is Rey Siasoco. I am a Spark-Y intern for the Summer 2022. I am very involved in many things at Edison High School so it was cool working at the garden there. Our group was working on a Seed Library. I learned a lot from this experience but one of the biggest thing I learned is budgeting. Our group had to research items, find the prices and go to the store to get then. It was a really fun experience and taught me a lot.

Olya Noyes

Hi Everyone! I, Olya, am an apprentice assistant with Spark-Y for the summer 2022 internship. Fun fact: I was previously an intern in 2019 with Spark-Y! We have mainly been taking care of the Holland Basin and Edison High School Garden. My favorite days so far have been weeding and running through the sprinklers on hot days and coming back to the office soaked.

Community Education Internship Team: Learn, Grow & Share

Spark-Y’s summer internship program provides hands-on engagement opportunities for High School students where they can experience and learn about sustainability, professionalism, and teamwork under the mentorship of Spark-Y Apprentices and full time staff. In the beginning of July this summer, our group came together to form the Community Education team. Our team members include Chue, our Sustainability Educator, Sam, our Sustainability apprentice, and Jaylah, Joe, Sebastian and Oliver, our Sustainability Interns. We have been working together on multiple projects such as the Mobile Innovation Lab (The Beast), the greenhouse at Roosevelt High School, and several activities centered in professional development. We want to share some of our experiences with you in this post!

The Mobile Innovation Lab, known to many students as The Beast, started out as an innovative way to take learning directly to many students in North Minneapolis. It combats the disparities and lack of accessibility that many students experienced during Covid. This summer, we, as the community education team, mobilized our team strength into supporting this amazing mobile learning bus. Joe, Jaylah, and Chue supported the Beast on the ground as a team by engaging and supporting over 60 students as they learned about coding, drones, and the scientific method. As the on the ground team, each day is a new and exciting experience. From doing pushups and sit ups as robotic drones following the codes that students wrote to watching students design and give animate life to an orange cat using the Scratch coding program, there is never a boring day on The Beast. As the capacity of The Beast is limited to 15 people, three members of our team find other outlets for supporting the Beast. Sam, Sebastian, and Oliver work on preparing for the next mobile innovation learning modules. Their continuous effort on creating material lists and activity guides has helped to prepare Spark-Y for future fun on the bus. Through our work on The Beast, we have all learned a lot about education, supervision, and project planning.

Spark-Y has partnered with Roosevelt High School since 2013, and our team responsibility this summer is to maintain and upkeep the greenhouse in front of Roosevelt High School. The purpose of the greenhouse is to provide a space for growing nutritious foods for the school and community. For the greenhouse, our team focused on improving the depleted soil in the greenhouse plant beds. One thing we did to improve the soil was take compost and put it in the two plant beds. As a team, we created a garden layout of all of the plants that are going to be planted in the greenhouse. We also designed a trellis that is going to be built and put in the green house for the cucumbers and beans that need a structure to climb on. To design the trellis, we first did some research on what other effective trellises look like. We then took inventory of the materials we had on hand. Individually, we all came up with our own designs, and then we each presented our ideas to the rest of the group. We were able to discuss the pros and cons of each design and work as a team to incorporate the best aspects of each idea into our best final design. Some other garden work that we did as a team also included removing weeds at Friendship Academy and helping maintain their gardens. We hope that all the work we do this summer will benefit Roosevelt and others in the community for the future to come. We also hope that the plants will grow in the greenhouse without any of the thrip problems that previously affected the greenhouse. 

Another notable event that the entire Spark-Y team had an opportunity to participate in was several professional development days, where several guest speakers, including Spark-Y’s own Executive Director Zach Robinson, helped us improve our conflict resolution skills, write better resumes and emails, and hone our leadership and communication ability. Through these engaging sessions, our group was able to think more deeply about potential future career paths as well as cultivating our own character so that we may thrive. A large part of these presentations was a myriad of hands-on activities, including a survey to determine potential career paths, a quiz to attempt to point out aspects of a professional inter-team message, and an activity consisting of sorting problems that a team might have into what exact issue was being faced. The last of these was especially effective, as we completed it in several randomly assembled smaller teams, letting us focus more on our individual inquiries about how to resolve these potential occurrences with people who we have worked with less than our focused team groups. Overall, these speakers and the activities they brought with them were an excellent opportunity, and we are glad they came to share their knowledge and help us succeed.

During our internship most of the time was spent on working in a group to meet a goal or get a project done, giving us plenty of opportunities to increase our ability to lead and work as a team. As a team we all had a great time working with each other and expressing our creativity through the projects that we work on, using new experiences as a conduit to come together, learn to work with one another, and create something based on a plan the team had formulated. As the summer continues, we hope that our group can continue to contribute to the community around us through these projects, and keep learning about how to improve both ourselves and the world around us.