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Internships at Lost Valley

We offer positions for interns to collaborate with us in many areas of our work, both as an intentional community and a nonprofit educational center. We are always looking for people who like to fun and have a strong work ethic. Lost Valley is a rich learning environment!  To read more about intern expectations and program details visit here. 

Benefits of Interning at Lost Valley

  • On-site room and board
  • 50% discount on tuition for Camassia Institute courses upon successful completion of six month internship
  • University class credit possible.  Diplomas possible through Gaia University
  • Individual skill development and work experience
  • Experience a developing ecovillage community with really cool people
  • Access to magnificent natural surroundings and abundant organic meals

Click on an internship to learn more

Please note, you are welcome to submit an application, even if a position is filled. We will simply hold on to your application and contact you if needed.  Thank you for your interest!

 Quick Links

General Internship Information Intern Orientation - Read Before Arriving
Internship Hours and Duration Giving Feedback
Intern Packing List An Intern Perspective - letter to a friend
   

Descriptions

Organizational Coordination Intern - Filled until December 2009

Duration:  6 months preferable, at minimum 3 months.
 
Background: LVEC is an intentional community and ecological education center that has operated for 18 years under a 501(c)(3) non-profit status. Through 2006, decisions were made by community-wide consensus in its weekly or bi-weekly Purpose Circle meetings, with assistance of a Core Group that met weekly as an "executive committee" to pre-digest community issues requiring attention and/or decisions. 
 
In February 2007, we adopted a "decentralized decision making model" composed of six "guilds" that provide oversight and support for our various program areas, including setting policies and procedures, budgets and spending plans, and related decisions. Recently we have streamlined the decision-making further by creating a management team and overhauling the bylaws at the Board of Directors level. The Executive Director holds the long-term "big picture" for LVEC, and assists members and staff as needed to provide for the smooth operations of the non-profit, the residential community, and the various income-generating business components. To assist LVEC in moving forward with significant structural and process changes pertaining to community membership, decision-making, financial operations, and others, we are seeking an intern to carry out the following:
 
Internship responsibilities and duties
 
Serve as assistant to and work partner of the Executive Director
Be centrally involved in creating and improving the various organizational systems and structures necessary for the operation of LVEC, including financial, governance, and human resources/staffing
Attend meetings and serve as scribe/recorder of actions taken and decisions made in these meetings, as requested
Carry out individual projects that enhance LVEC's organizational effectiveness
Other job-related duties as they arise, including preparation for Board meetings
Commit to working 30 hours per week in this internship, plus up to 10 additional hours of community service time (a requirement of ALL members and interns)
Ten of the 30 hours may involve a temporary reassignment to cover priority community needs, e.g., conference support, facilities maintenance, etc., though generally most or all of the weekly hours will be focused on OC work

Preferred skills and experience of candidates
Ability to grasp the "big picture"; 
Interest in organizational issues and community administration; 
Mediation and facilitation; 
Excellent oral and written skills; 
Good listener; 
Sees needs and is willing to take on challenges to meet them; 
Knowledge of systems thinking and concepts; 
Self-starting and ability to work independently, with guidance
 
Supervisor/Mentor: LVEC Executive Director
 

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Development Intern - Open

Duration: Minimum 3 months, preferable 6 months.

We seek a dynamic individual interested in working in the area of grant preparation and fundraising.  Work will involve foundation database research, project development towards grant proposal creation, and implementation of fundraising activities.
 
Specific duties: 
 
Grants: Work as a support person in the development of 3-6 grant proposals, including building a foundation database for the organization, assisting with project budget and narrative development, development of partnerships within local businesses, educational facilities and governments.  
 
Fundraising: Work will involve event creation and implementation, development of sponsorship of organizational activities, and development of a financial supporters program.  
 
Other work tasks as may be assigned.  
 
Time commitment: 30 hours per week plus residential duties. Minimum internship for three months, preferred six months.  
 

More Details on internships

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Lost Valley Green Retrofit Intern - Open, Accepting Applications

Design Brief
Join us for a permaculture creative adventure. Using recycled materials and found objects, the chosen designer will weave functional art and science into an established ecovillage.

Projects to be completed
- Site Materials inventory and organization
- Two projects of your own design using reclaimed materials
- Contribute to on site retrofiting as needed

Benefits
- Opportunity to design and build a sustainable project for a well known ecovillage
- Funding for study at the  Camassia Institute for Sustainable Communities
- Delicious organic meals and beautiful retreat camping
- Experience living and working on a 20 year old permaculture site and intentional community.

Minimum Duration
- Two months

Qualifications
- Creative and self motivated in working with reclaimed materials
- Knowledge of sustainable building and appropriate technology
- Design/ build experience
- Wood working skills

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Hospitality, Service and Sacred Space - Open, Accepting Applications 

Duration: Minimum 2 months

Our community and educational center is looking for committed cultural evolutionaries who love to create their world and work as a continuous expression of appreciation for life and the joy of a job well done. Your time will include meditative chores that foster the care with which we treat our guests. We provide many opportunities to re-create our living spaces and honor all our surroundings as sacred. Explore Feng Shui principles and other ideas of sacred space.
 
The qualified applicant will be a motivated self-starter with some prior experience in service work. Strong communication skills and the ability to assess tasks and work independently are essential. Repetitive tasks make up at least 50 percent of the job time, so a keen eye for detail and a meditative attunement will allow for maximum personal growth during your internship.

Job specifics include: general cleaning and housekeeping, bed making, laundry duties, conference space set-up and take-down, team collaboration, grounds-keeping, solitary work-time, space renovation, creative design opportunities, and plenty of chances for meaningful connections.  Currently the SASS position is part time with the remaining time devoted to the participant's desires.  Some have done gardening or kitchen work with the remaining hours. 
 
Position offered year-round, as available.  We want someone who loves to clean and who can find joy in helping us keep our spaces looking beautiful, and who is self-motivated, responsible, and dedicated. 

 

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Events and Outreach Intern- Open, Accepting Applications

Duration: Minimum 6 months

Work with our Events Team to plan, advertise, register, support and coordinate events for progressive groups, ranging from conferences to weekend workshops to week-long sustainability training programs. You have skills and experience that include: general office and organizational skills, typing, time management and teamwork, good verbal and written communication, people skills, reliability, attention to detail, and accountability. Marketing and graphic design skills a big plus! Includes administrative event preparation, as well as direct support and coordination during events. Plenty of opportunities to create your own projects in this area!

This internship is available year-round as available. We prefer a minimum commitment of 6-12 months due to the depth of orientation required.  

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Graphic Design and Outreach Internship -  Open, Accepting Applications - Telecommuting Possible

Minimum Duration: 3 months

This is a dynamic and exciting position for someone with graphic design and outreach skills who would love to experience life in an intentional community devoted to sustainability.

Lost Valley seeks an intern to assist us in the following:

  • Work with our Education and Conference Center Director to identify outreach needs and potential markets/client groups
  • Design and execute print, web, and email outreach strategies and materials
  • Further develop and maintain our existing website
  • Maintain central database of program mailing lists and central repository of outreach information
  • Act as a point person to respond to requests for information on Lost Valley's programs
  • Coordinate Lost Valley tabling at events and fairs, and manage Lost Valley presence on internet networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Tribe.net, etc...)

Requirements:  Proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel and some experience with Access. Strong written and verbal communication skills. Must be diligent and able to work independently. Working knowledge of InDesign and Drupal 6.x strongly preferred.

It is a plus if you have taken a permaculture course and are familiar with the basic principles, or are interested in ecological sustainability. This internship is no shorter than three months, with a preference for a six month term of service.

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Kitchen Internships (Camassia, Conference, and Community) - Open, Accepting Applications

 
At Lost Valley the kitchen is always busy and we like to have fun and put love into what we do.  Kitchen interns do a wide variety of activities, including vegetarian cooking and food preparation for our community and conference center, stocking food and kitchen staples, helping with the coop, inventory and reporting, creating menus, coordinating with community's garden to integrate on-site food production, gleaning and off-site food gathering, goat milking and cheese making, bread baking, fresh honey harvesting,  mushroom growing and harvesting, food preserving (jams, pickles, drying, etc.), wild fermenting, and a myriad of other food related projects.   We encourage our kitchen interns to learn and pursue projects that they are passionate about, and share those skills with the kitchen team and the community. 
 
Kitchen interns must have experience in the food service industry or specific knowledge or experience related to food preparation and food safety procedures.  A food handler’s card is required and can be obtained easily from the Oregon Department of Health.  Excitement for helping with a growing co-op is preferable.  Interns should be flexible and reliable with a people-oriented attitude.  The kitchen crew works as a team.  We welcome people who enjoy learning through doing, and take pleasure in accomplishing goals and successfully completing tasks. We have four internships available in our kitchen, each with a different focus:



  1. Food Preservation Intern:  See separate job description below. Filled until June 2010
  2. Community Kitchen Intern: Specializes in coordination between the kitchen and our residential community. Open, Accepting Applications.  Offered year-round, as available.
  3. Conference Kitchen Intern: Manages planning and kitchen coordination for conferences.  Weekends sometimes required.  Accepting Applications for February through November 2010.
  4. Camassia Kitchen Intern: Supports the kitchen during our educational programs and also assists with kitchen and food preservation efforts August-September.  Open, Accepting Applications.
Please note that while we always prepare and serve vegetarian and/or vegan options for our community and conference center meals, we also regularly utilize organic eggs, cheese, and milks. Some members of our community are not vegetarian and fish or meat dishes may occasionally be provided at meals alongside our standard vegetarian fare. Excellent service in fulfilling our conference guests requests is paramount to us, and sometimes includes preparation of cheese, eggs, and/or fish for meals.  Working in our kitchen is a great way to explore a bio-regional approach to food cultivation, and it's a lot of fun. We love our kitchen interns!  




 
 
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Food Preservation Internship - Filled until June 2010

Duration: June to December




The Food Preservation Internship is a unique and exciting learning opportunity here at LostValley.  As an ecologically based intentional community we realize that food preservation is an integral way of life for eating a local and seasonal diet.  By preserving the abundance of our harvests throughout the bright summer and fall months, we can sustain ourselves through the rainy and grey winter months with plenty of nutritious variety and flavors. 
 

Kitchen interns must have experience in the food service industry or specific knowledge or experience related to food preparation and food safety procedures. A food handler’s card is required and can be obtained easily from the Oregon Department of Health. Interns should be flexible and reliable with a people-oriented attitude. The kitchen crew works as a team. We welcome people who enjoy learning through doing and take pleasure in accomplishing goals and successfully completing tasks. This internship is very hands on and will require someone with a lot of self motivation and an enthusiasm for learning and experimenting.  Not only will you be preserving food for use by our community and the visitors and students of our education and events center, but you will be creating “value-added” preserved food products for sale at the Eugene Saturday Farmer’s Market. Since these products will bear the LostValley name they must be sustainable, presentable, consistent, and delicious! 


Food preservation can take many forms, and ideally the intern will have some experience or knowledge of different preservation techniques.  However, if someone is a quick learner, a self-starter, and is very interested in learning food preservation, experience is not necessarily a pre-requisite.  There will be some required reading before the start of the internship.  Preservation techniques that you will use include: Canning, drying (dehydrating, sun-drying, and oven drying), cellaring and hanging (and other “passive” food preservation techniques), freezing, curing, smoking, pickling, fermentation, lacto-fermentation, beer brewing and wine making, cider pressing, and more.  The intern may also be expected to coordinate trips to nearby farms to glean (berries, hazelnuts, etc.), or to do wild harvesting (mushrooms, berries, etc.) nearby.  The intern will also be expected to help the kitchen team as necessary and as requested by the kitchen manager.  The intern will also be responsible for keeping records on methodology, technique, and production.  Safety during food preservation is crucial, and the intern should follow safety guidelines at all times.   
 
 
 
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Land and Permaculture Intern - Filled until December 2009, Accepting Applications for 2010

Description;  This hands on learning experience will be conducted through the Lost Valley Land Care Division under the stewardship of reknown permaculturist, Rick Valley and his team of experienced land care apprentices. Interns will fine tune gardening and permaculture systems and skills.  Working side by side with experienced landterns, they will work  a variety of land care projects such as:

- Orcharding fruit tree production
- Forest gardening
- Composting
- Greenhouse contruction
- Nursery starts
- Plant propagation
- Soil building
- Long term land management

The goal of this learning experience to provide an in depth understanding of long term land management stratedgies, ecoforestry and organic gardening.  Apprentices will be exposed to a wide range of permaculture practices and uses of appropriate technology.  Upon completion, they should be able to create and maintain a productive food forest in the Pacific Northwest.  This is expected to be a life changing, transformative experience that will teach you to think, live and breath permculture.

Duration:  Minimum three months, preferable six months or more
 

Works in coordination with our land steward and well-known Permaculture teacher, Rick Valley, designing and implementing land management activities including: orchard maintenance, eco-forestry, water conservation, and food production. Works to support the Ecovillage and Permaculture Certificate Programs through site preparations and guiding students in hands-on projects.
 

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Organic Gardening Intern - Open, Accepting Applications

We grow large quantities of a wide variety of vegetables with organic methods, placing a high value on sustainability. We emphasize hand labor and techniques including biointensive, "wild" gardening and permaculture. 

Interns will refine the following skills:

Interns will learn about and participate in growing a year-round garden in the Pacific Northwest within an educational community. Garden activities (dependent on time of year) include sheet mulching, soil preparation, sowing and saving seed, transplanting, composting, weeding, plant propagation, harvesting, food preservation, greenhouse management, and other skills. We grow food for the resident intentional community, for participants in our educational programs and for conference center guests. We cultivate large quantities of a variety of vegetables with organic methods, placing a high value on sustainability. Emphasis is on hand labor and techniques including biointensive, "wild" gardening, and permaculture. As time allows, we also help maintain and support the work of the Lost Valley Nature Center, with its trail network, on-site restoration projects, periodic walks, and other educational activities.
 

Qualifications:

Qualified interns will have previous gardening experience and be excited about teaching others, coordinating projects and working cooperatively. In summer we start early every day to "beat the heat." We pace ourselves, try to vary activities frequently, and attempt to use wits rather than brawn (of which we are often in short supply) whenever possible, but work can be strenuous and/or repetitive at times and does require endurance in an outdoor environment. Important traits include interest, enthusiasm, responsibility, a cooperative orientation, and the ability for self-care, as we aim to practice sustainability with ourselves as well as with the garden.

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