Urban Ag Internships

I love the internship very much. The people here are great and so are the field trips. I learned a lot throughout the years. If I could do this for my whole life I would.

At first I just thought this internship was just going to teach me how to plant and about agriculture, now I know there’s so much more to it. I’ve learned a lot of things that will help me in the future when I actually get a job in the real world. Since we are going on field trips, we get to meet people and talk to them about their careers. That helped me with communication and talking with more professional manners. Communication skills are everything.

Before the internship I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the future. After I joined the internship, it helped me realise that I really like agriculture and I enjoy planting a lot. I am now thinking about doing something in the future that involves agriculture.

I’ve also learned the hard skills I need for that career path – like plant identification and how to take care of a garden. I’ve learned a lot about different plant species over time. For example native plants. I’ve never really heard of native plants before until I joined this internship. When we went to that little highway garden full of native plants, I learned a lot about how important they are for the environment.

The skills I’ve learned will help me succeed in my future, not just in other jobs but in day to day situations with people I face everyday. Both of my soft and hard skills are very useful to me even currently outside of my internship – I’m able to help my family with tasks, especially help my dad with my hard skills, and I use my soft skills with my friends. Whenever there is a difficult situation, I’m able to handle the problem maturely and communicate my feelings.

This internship has helped me connect with my community too by having us engage in multiple teamwork scenarios, including in fun ways where I was able to learn more about the people around me. It has helped me connect with the environment by educating me on everything that is around us. Working in nature everyday has accustomed me to act on instinct even in other places, with composting, planting, cleaning and taking care of the earth in general.

The internship is a great way to make new experiences as well as become engaged with the environment around us daily. As we go on field days I often look back to those days and connect it with new knowledge that I come across as everything connects like a puzzle. I’ve been able to think about more than just the community around me but the whole world. Also the community not just of humans but of living creatures such as wildlife and even bacteria. Things like littering and specific practices that harm our earth constantly run through my head when it happens in front of me because I’ve had experiences of mentors exposing the impact of those toxins.

I’ve learned I really like managing others because that’s what I was born to do. As this internship has greatly helped me practice these skills, I want to be a manager of something or help others succeed. I’ve learned empathy, patience, critical thinking, compassion, consideration for others, awareness of how my community is feeling, reading emotions and body languages, time management, communication with others, and redirection rather than rejection.

I have gained many skills through our work in the garden too such as regenerative agriculture practices, managing people, timesheet information, tool use, bed and soil management, plant identification, compost management, helping plant sales, guiding customers and customer service, event planning, painting, irrigation management, sustainable agriculture practices, crop management, precious hand weeding, and plant observation for health concerns. The internship is great and I hope for others to experience this wonderful community and space!

I think I’ve grown a lot – the support of the internships is amazing and I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it without them. I have had a huge amount of self improvement and self growth and I’ve become a better person in general. I’ve learned how to communicate with people and understand people. I learned to be productive and help others when needed. It has shown me things that I’m passionate about and has given me hobbies that will more than likely keep food on the table and money in my pockets.

[The internship has helped me] become a more confident person and I’m able to speak up when necessary. I am definitely more of a leader than I used to be. I came in very shy and wanted to improve my social skills. Through this internship I was able to improve my communication skills and build better bonds and make lots of connections with my coworkers and organizations we’ve met along the way. I’ve been able to experience so many things that old me would’ve never been able to do. I got to partake in one of my great grandfather‘s biggest passions and see why he loved gardening so much.

This internship has also given me the opportunity to explore my interest in teaching art. Through our Workforce Development course I was allowed to teach my own lesson about art to my coworkers. I want to pursue an art career and through the lesson I’ve decided that teaching art is something I’d love to do.

The internship also gave me opportunities to connect with my community through giving back. With all the extra things we had from our harvest, we were able to give it back to the students at our school and provide them with organic fresh fruits, and vegetables and flowers to take.

I’ve learned to value nature and how impactful our connection to the natural world is. Our health as a society, a community, a nation, as a species, like all other creatures and flora we coexist with, is dependent on the health state of our planet. This internship has led to my further understanding of how important it is not just to strive for sustainability but to achieve regeneration. Banding together with my fellow colleagues, and also classmates, I’ve gotten the beautiful opportunity to work and experience regeneration firsthand.

I’ve also learned soft skills like communication, small and large-scale collaboration, developing community, stress management, and conflict management and resolution. With the skills I’ve gained from the internship I feel like I can confidently communicate with others and strive for a better future mentally, physically, and professionally.

This internship has helped me connect with people in my community that I never would have thought of. Like I never would have imagined all the things people do to keep our community safe and protected and I learned about people who do this because of this internship.

I no longer feel like it’s necessary to shut myself off from people so I don’t get disappointed. I also know how and when is the appropriate time to advocate for myself and the people around me. And lastly I’m no longer afraid to put myself out there in the open.

This internship helped me envision my future by exposing me to different career paths through guest speakers, field days, and hands-on experience in urban agriculture. It also gave me the confidence and tools to pursue my goals, like applying to college, building a resume, and developing professional and personal skills that will support me in any path I choose.

The strong connections I built with my coworkers helped me become more confident in work settings by creating a supportive environment where I felt heard, valued, and encouraged to step out of my comfort zone. Collaborating with them on projects and events taught me how to communicate openly, take initiative, and trust myself as part of a team.

Some of the most memorable moments for me during the internship were visiting the Ujamaa Farmer Collective and seeing real-world issues in action at a local farm—it opened my eyes to the impact of community work. I also really loved the everyday garden work, especially working and laughing with my peers, the fun of the cooking competitions, and the moments when we debriefed our feelings, which meant a lot since that’s something many of us don’t often get to do at home.

Before the internship, I didn’t always take time to reflect on my emotions or understand how they affected my actions, but now I’ve become much more emotionally intelligent. With the support of Circles, the Inner Journey Workbook, and a caring team, I’ve learned to express myself better, manage stress in healthier ways, and be more understanding of others.

This internship was truly a highlight for me—it made me excited to go to school some days because I knew I’d be working with a supportive team, learning new things, and experiencing hands-on projects that felt meaningful. It wasn’t just about the skills I gained; it was the connections, the laughter, and the sense of purpose that made school feel more enjoyable and gave me a reason to look forward to each day.

The internship has helped me envision and pursue my future by the field trips experiencing new opportunities in fields I could study. Also from career learning from professionals on how they got to where they are. Seeing nurses and environmental professionals had made me think about those different types of jobs I can do, not just very popular, common jobs. That there are many “hidden” jobs we can do. I’ve also asked many questions and stayed curious researching how to pursue this.

The internship has helped me connect with my community by understanding that some people do care about what we consume and what we do with our environment. Helping people with gardening, giving tips and sharing crops made in a community garden. It’s made me want to do the same thing in planting my own crops that would be much more healthy.

This internship has allowed me to connect to the environment by learning about its needs and by taking care of the space around me. Through networking and communication this job has allowed me to grow close with my community.

This internship has allowed me to get out of my bubble. I have made many new friends and grew more confidence in networking and communication. I’ve learned more about myself and the people around me, as well as jobs I’d like to indulge in.

My most memorable moment in this internship was creating the posters for my environmental justice project. These projects allowed us to tie the politics and wrong doings of the prison system and connect it to the food manufacturers that take advantage of these people. This project allowed me to not only educate myself but all my other peers both inside and outside the internship.

This internship strengthened both my personal and professional growth. One of the biggest growths was in communication – not just speaking clearly in public or during presentations, but also learning how to actively listen and share ideas in a group. I improved in my teamwork and collaboration skills while working with others interns in group projects. I also learned and improved on my leadership, through leadership activities and opportunities like planning or leading in garden tours. I’ve learned about managing projects, speaking up with confidence, staying organized in everyday life, and making a positive impact in my community. It has helped me stay motivated and focused on my future. I never used to be confident in myself – I would always doubt myself, leading to always making last minute decisions or missing opportunities. Since joining this internship, it opened up to me all these different opportunities and skills I’ve never thought I would get or have. I feel more confident facing challenges, trying new things, and staying true to what matters to me. It taught me how powerful collaboration can be. Through Circle and self-reflection it helped me grow on a deeper level even if
it was slow. Now I feel even more confident in opening up myself to others.

This internship has deeply changed my connection to both my community and the environment. Working in the garden has taught me how powerful it is to care for the earth and support the people around me just from growing food. All these experiences have shown me how community work and environmental care go hand-in-hand. All these efforts make me inspired to stay involved and make a difference.

This internship has played a big role in what I want to do in the future. I discovered that I am passionate about giving back to the community and improving our lives for a better future. I want to go and pursue a future where I can eventually come back and change the environment for the better.

Something that was memorable to me is just being able to meet all these new people that are making big changes over the world and meeting potentially future environmentalists. But I think the most powerful memory is being able to learn new things, working side by side with my friends, and being able to go on so many fun and engaging field days.

Through this internship, I was able to express my feelings better with others thanks to Circle. I also was able to open up more easily to people I didn’t know and was also able to make new friends. I learned to be more empathetic, know when it is appropriate to speak, have a strong work ethic, manage my time, communicate, be more self-aware, more aware of my surroundings, ground myself, and take care of myself and my mental health. The skills I have learned—time management, self care, companionship, compassion, empathy, communication — will help in my future profoundly, in all places such as work, personal life, education, and in general. It has helped me become a better person and more prepared for what is to come in the coming months (a lot of change).

Through all the field trips we have taken to places such as the Ujamaa Farm, Farm to Fork Festival, the local Oak Park garden by the freeway, a little alley way community garden, and even other schools, I have learned a lot about our community around us. It has helped understand and see how others work with their space and what practices they do differently and similarly, learning and growing from each other. It has helped me connect with the environment because we go on field days where we barely use our technology and rather take time to be one with nature and ground ourselves.

I learned to be more independent, both financially and personally. I was able to create so many new life long memories thanks to this internship. The friendships I came with into this internship have grown bigger and I have deepened my connections. I have learned so much about myself, our environment, others, and the workplace place that will help perpetually in the future!

This internship has helped me envision and pursue my future by allowing me to explore various career paths. It’s inspired me to consider a career related to the agricultural/environmental field. The internship helped me connect with both my community and the environment, helping me open up and become more actively involved in public activities, whether it was leading events, volunteering, meeting new people, or participating in field days where we explored new places and learned from others. Through this internship, I developed a huge appreciation for the environment around me.

Through this internship, I feel like I’m more self-aware than ever before, it almost feels like I’m full of new knowledge. It changed me mentally, made me feel genuinely happier, and helped me build deeper connections with the other interns – something I would never have expected from my past self.

The internship has helped me envision and pursue my future by giving me opportunities to work different jobs in the internship to see what else I like. It has shown me so many different green careers I can work – that there is way more than just working in farms, like being a greenhouse manager and working in green construction. I really think I changed a whole lot when I started this internship. When I started, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But now that I have caught a glimpse of a lot of different majors and jobs that are with nature and farms, there are many careers I would love to pursue.

Being in the Urban Ag Internship has helped me with] opening up; I definitely worked on opening up more during this internship through reflections and circle time. I learned that I have safe spaces and that it’s helpful to speak to others about my personal problems. It’s also helped me to become more interactive in professional environments. I definitely was a little more shy in the beginning of the internship, but now looking back I am a lot more outgoing and witty.

The internship helped me connect with the community and the environment by bringing me closer to people that I haven’t really seen or spoken to before; I was able to make new friends in school, see people doing impactful things in the community. Plant Mindfulness pushed my environmental appreciation to the max, letting me take close consideration to nature.