Co-op / Organization:
A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative
Location:
Waltham, MA
Type of Organization:
Worker
Brief Description of Organization:
A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative is a worker-owned cooperative conversion comprised primarily of immigrants from El Salvador. We formed the coop in 2013 and purchased our company from our former boss on her retirement in Jan 2014. Our mission is to design, build, and maintain beautiful and healthy outdoor spaces that enrich the lives of our co-workers, clients, and community. As an established company, we focus on sustainable landscape design, construction, and organic gardening for residential and non-profit clients. As a young coop, we're actively engaged in cultivating a cooperative culture, helping our members to understand and take full advantage of their investment in the coop, and attracting new worker-owner candidates by becoming a great place to work.
Website:
http://www.ayardandahalf.com/
Number of Members:
10
Number of Staff:
24
Dress Code:
Casual
Internship Position Title:
Cooperative Development Intern
Internship Position Duties:
Interns will support the coop mission and goals through assistance with marketing, outreach to build relationships with other like-minded organizations, and "in-reach" to engage current and prospective worker-owners.
Specific projects will be tailored to the Intern’s skills, passions, and learning goals, but may include:
- Developing print, web, and video marketing materials targeting prospective clients, industry partners, and employees.
- Member-candidate recruitment through job fairs, outreach, cooperative conferences and meet-ups.
- Content development for website, blog, and inbound marketing campaigns.
- Maintaining and strategically building the coop’s social media presence to develop interest from prospective clients and member-candidates.
- Conducting research, interviews, and needs-assessments with employees, worker-owners, current clients, and target market segments to guide the coop’s growth strategy.
- Designing key metrics and data collection to more accurately capture the coop’s triple bottom-line impact. Gamify us!
- Facilitating our community service program by identifying potential client sites, conducting outreach, and recruiting/managing project team and volunteers.
- Researching and following up on opportunities for coop members to speak, write, or contribute to articles.
- Planning and implementing education sessions for worker-owners and employees (cooperative education, professional skills, communication, life skills, mindfulness practice, etc.)
Position Training:
Our model of growth is that everyone in the organization is simultaneously teacher and learner, so we expect everyone to take responsibility for asking questions and engaging with others for mutual learning. Interns will be supervised by the Co-CEO. They will go through the coop's new employee orientation program to gain both background on the coop and understanding of daily operations. Because we are a small organization, all of us wear varied hats and enjoy doing different things every day -- interns will develop a contract with their supervisor outlining learning goals, available training resources, and projects. They will have scheduled weekly supervision to reflect on what they are learning and put it in the context of wider justice issues.
Skills Development & Learning:
An internship with A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative is an opportunity to learn how a for-profit enterprise can be a vehicle for social change, and to gain valuable experience and insights in management of a triple bottom-line business. Interns will learn about the role of worker-owned cooperatives in the movement for social and economic justice, as well as ways that our coop is working to address poverty, immigration issues, and environmental health. Depending on their interests, interns will also learn about business management, business and personal finance, coop governance, marketing, popular and experiential education.
Other details of working conditions:
Shared staff desk & computer; own laptop a plus; office is accessible via bike & public transit
Compensation ($):
$14 (hourly) - payable weekly
Is Room Included?:
No
Working Hours:
Flexible, PT M-F 9-5, occasional weekday early a.m. or evening meetings
Total Hours of Work Per Week:
16-24