Unpaid Internships and Food Justice

Earlier today, someone commented on a post of ours:

' Isn't it a bit hypocritical to talk about "food justice" while limiting participation in the program to people who can afford to work for free? '

This came in response to our organization sharing our unpaid internship opportunities in food justice work. Specifically, we are in need of another round of interns who can help us staff farmers' markets around Sacramento in order to allow CalFresh (SNAP) recipients to use their benefits to buy groceries at these markets.

I appreciate the question. It is a question we have been asking internally, as well. In fact, just four days ago I was writing up a proposal requesting sponsorship funds that would allow us to convert our internships from unpaid to paid. The proposal laid out the following:

Although the practice of unpaid internships is commonplace throughout the non-profit sector due to financial constraints, the evidence has been piling up demonstrating that such an approach is inequitable and presents a barrier to organizational diversity and inclusion:

• Women are over-represented in unpaid internships (3 out of 4 unpaid interns) because the fields most likely to offer unpaid internships are dominated by women. Thus, the gender pay gap begins in college at the internship level.
• Students of low- and middle-income families are effectively excluded from unpaid internships. The cost of college has skyrocketed in recent decades, resulting in students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds accumulating significant student debt. An unpaid internship uses valuable time that could be spent earning wages to help offset the cost of college, and so the lack of payment prevents many students from being able to afford such an internship.
• Black, indigenous, and students of color are over-represented among low-income students, meaning that the socioeconomic exclusion results in racial exclusion.
• Students who are disabled are also more likely to be low-income, and so more likely to be excluded from these internship opportunities.
• Internships provide students with professional development, education, networking opportunities, resume experience, and references. By preventing low-income students from participating in these internships, unpaid internships contribute to income inequality.
• Organizations commonly recruit employees and board members from former interns, meaning that barriers in internship programs contribute to inequity, exclusion, and homogeneity throughout the organization.*

In sum, I quite agree that there is a real problem with unpaid internships.

An imperfect system

Unfortunately, we find ourselves constrained by the circumstances of an imperfect system. While we were fortunate enough to receive a special grant from NextGen Policy earlier this year that allowed us to pay our interns for several months, we normally (and currently) do not have such funding.

You may well be asking whether we should even have internships if we cannot currently pay the interns. A little backstory may be helpful here:

By 2004, the national safety net known as Food Stamps had completely converted from actual stamps torn out of a booklet to electronic cards (EBT) similar to debit and credit cards. These cards greatly simplified the process of distributing nutritional benefits, but they created a new problem for farmers' markets: each farmer selling at a market would need their own card-reader and their own account with the state in order to accept payment from these EBT cards. The Ecology Center led the way on a solution here in California, pioneering a new approach in which a farmers' market could be served by a single card reading machine. CalFresh recipients could simply swipe their card at the CalFresh booth, deduct funds from their balance, and receive the deducted amount in scrip or market vouchers that could be used like cash to pay the farmers. The farmers would then turn in the scrip and collect payment in real dollars.

Unfortunately, there is no funding mechanism in the State of California that funds the full cost of providing this CalFresh Access service at a farmers' market. This means that when an organization like ours provides CalFresh Access at a market, we are largely dependent on our ability to successfully apply for private grants and sponsorships in order to ensure that CalFresh recipients are able to shop at these markets.

This leaves us with a decision: do we provide this service for our neighbors in low-income households at more markets by working with unpaid interns, or do we drop the internships altogether and leave more markets inaccessible to CalFresh recipients?

Forced into this binary choice, we are choosing to err on the side of providing service at more markets through unpaid internships. Low-income neighbors maintain their ability to buy high-quality and nutritious produce at a good price from local farmers and the interns gain valuable professional experience and our assistance in pursuing future opportunities; but students who cannot afford an unpaid internship are left out of the opportunity.

At the same time, we see it as intrinsic to our mission to work to break out of this imperfect binary. We cannot settle for this situation and so we are actively addressing the symptom of the problem by seeking funding for paid internships. We are also exploring options to advocate for policy changes that will help ensure suitable funding exists to provide CalFresh Access at every California farmers' market.

It is our hope that we can do important work in an imperfect system while simultaneously working to reform that system.

*In preparing my proposal earlier this week, this article from Jyarland Daniels provided me with my primer: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-unpaid-internships-undermine-diversity-inclusion-daniels-mba-jd/?trackingId=EF1WqooYRwSFsIhIaaT%2BUA%3D%3D