Open Hearts Initiative

About OHI: The Open Hearts Initiative builds community support for housing and services for homeless New Yorkers by organizing housed community residents to advocate for housing justice in their own backyards. We connect communities, homeless New Yorkers, and service providers to create welcoming environments rooted in empathy, compassion, and respect in order to build strong and integrated neighborhoods.

OHI staff support a network of volunteers in neighborhood-based chapters across New York City, helping them mobilize community resources for neighbors experiencing homelessness, advocate for needed transitional and permanent housing in their communities, and build connections across housing status.

About the internship: As OHI grows, we’re looking for a motivated intern to help our team coordinate and carry out neighborhood-based programs, events, and volunteer activities that connect housed and unhoused neighbors. This internship will provide hands-on experience in community organizing, volunteer engagement, event coordination, and housing justice advocacy. This internship will run over the course of the fall semester (September through the end of December, with some flexibility for exact start and end dates depending on your academic schedule), with the potential to continue beyond December based on fit and OHI’s needs. You will report to the neighborhood organizer. This internship pays $17/hour for up to 15 hours a week. This is a hybrid role. Day-to-day work can be done in our office in Harlem or a combination of remote/in-office, but you must be located in the New York metro area and have the ability to attend occasional in-person events. A MetroCard will be provided for work-related travel.

Responsibilities: You will own several recurring logistical and administrative tasks that help our programs run, while gaining experience in community organizing, volunteer engagement, and housing justice advocacy. Your responsibilities may include:

• Coordinating logistics for several neighborhood programs and events, including donation drives and shelter-based programming
• Preparing materials and supplies for events, confirming logistics with volunteers and partners, and helping ensure events are ready to run smoothly
• Preparing communication and outreach materials, including flyers, webpage updates, and social media content for events and programming across chapters
• Communicating with volunteers about event logistics, schedules, local needs, and opportunities to get involved
• Managing recurring administrative tasks, including the intake process for new volunteers, maintaining our volunteer database, and tracking participation
• Supporting relationship-building with neighbors who are experiencing homelessness, including by attending and helping to organize various in-person community events
• Attending OHI events and meetings, helping with setup and execution, and taking notes to document key takeaways and follow-up needs

Skills/Experience: We are looking for someone with exceptional communication and organizational skills, with a keen eye for detail. Our ideal intern can take on the day-to-day tasks of event planning and execution while keeping the larger picture of our mission and vision in mind. You should be able to take ownership of recurring tasks, manage multiple deadlines, and identify opportunities to expand our impact. You should feel comfortable asking questions when you need guidance while also taking initiative to solve problems independently and communicating proactively when something is not going as planned. This role requires interacting with a wide range of people with respect and care. You should feel comfortable engaging with people from different backgrounds, showing up somewhere new and introducing yourself. Direct experience in housing and/or homelessness is not required, but we are looking for someone who is eager to learn about these issues and interested in community organizing and housing justice. Spanish speaking skills are a plus but not required.