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