Youth Safeguarding & Autonomy Intern

What Will You Do: Support the design and improvement of Youth Safeguarding and Youth Autonomy trainings, making them more engaging, practical, and aligned with real-world contexts

Lead updates to Ashoka’s Youth Autonomy Toolkit, working alongside staff and young people to ensure it reflects lived experience and is easy to use

Conduct research on the insurance landscape affecting youth-serving organizations, including policies, trends, and key actors shaping definitions of risk and safety

Help identify opportunities to influence the field, including mapping strategies to shift how institutions understand youth agency as a strength rather than a liability

Engage with young people, educators, and partners to gather insights and test ideas

Contribute to internal strategy discussions, synthesis documents, and external-facing materials

Who Are You: You care deeply about young people and believe in their ability to lead and create change

You are curious about how systems work and motivated to challenge assumptions, especially around risk, safety, and control

You are a strong researcher and clear writer, able to synthesize complex ideas into actionable insights

You are comfortable working independently in a remote environment and collaborating across a distributed team

You bring a thoughtful, reflective approach and are open to learning from young people as co-leaders

You are driven, well-organized, and detail-oriented while finding fun opportunities to innovate every day 

You have an ability to go deep...into a model, into a field, into an idea 

You are comfortable working in ambiguity. Experience making something ambiguous concrete and actionable 

You have self-motivation and an entrepreneurial ability 

You can work independently in a collaborative, creative environment  

You have a desire to cause systemic change

What You’ll Gain: Hands-on experience contributing to systems-level change in youth development and safeguarding

Exposure to Ashoka’s global network and approach to changemaking

Opportunities to shape tools, trainings, and strategies used by educators and organizations

Mentorship from a team working at the forefront of youth agency and autonomy