Environmental internships help Bay Area youth explore green careers

Interns at the Rising Sun Center for Opportunity receive several weeks of training before their first Green House Call. Here, interns practice installing and checking energy-efficient appliances.

Each summer, high school students migrate en masse to summer camps, community centers, fast-food restaurants, and movie theaters in a first-job rite of passage. According to the US Department of Labor, in 2024 around 6.6 million youth were employed during the summer, representing a third of the population ages 16-19. Not only do summer jobs allow youth to contribute to family income and save for college, but they also teach valuable social and budgeting skills.

This summer, many Bay Area youth continue the tradition. Most gravitate towards the regular assortment of jobs, but a few take advantage of the unique environmental internships available. In doing so, they are introduced to a wide variety of green careers that positively impact the people and places around them.

At Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, which serves all nine Bay Area counties, youth help contribute to the center’s mission of training a new workforce and helping California residents reduce their waste and carbon emissions. Interns are trained to conduct Green House Calls, where they install water- and energy-efficient appliances for the center’s customers. Though, customers may not be exactly the right word.

Rising Sun interns practice installing energy-efficient appliances after several weeks of training for Green House Calls.

Malaika Khan, an outreach manager at Rising Sun, explained that the service is entirely free, and the hardest part is often convincing residents to register.

“The youth workforce development part is something that does help a lot of residents want to sign up, because we’re letting them know that this is a program that is going towards California’s workforce,” Khan said.

Not only does the summer program provide a unique vocational education, but it also culminates in an externship placement in the fall. As a graduate of the program, Khan stressed its supportive nature.

“They're helping you with your LinkedIn profiles, with your resume, with your cover letters. They're literally preparing you to enter a green career. You have that experience of working at Rising Sun and working at the second organization, and you have that credibility starting at 15 years old. Who else has that type of experience?” Khan said.

In the San Jose area, electrification interns hosted by Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action (SVYCA) and Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE) take on the job of educating their local communities about electrification and clean energy. They prepare informational presentations for students, lead workshops, and spearhead talks with school district administrators. One group even expanded the program to include elementary school students as their audience, incorporating interactive activities to keep the young students engaged.

The program covers many aspects of clean energy technology and implementation, but it also focuses on the people skills and community engagement necessary to make green solutions work on a large scale.

Before her time as an intern, Chiara Luey was set on becoming an environmental engineer. Now a clean energy advisor managing her own group of interns at PCE, she noted that the program “steered me more towards social science and political science and the study of human culture. There are a lot of different disciplines that come together when you’re working with social impact.”

In San Francisco, Enterprise for Youth introduces youth to environmental justice, outdoor stewardship, and climate science through the Climate Career Corps. Launched just four years ago, the initiative has helped over 300 young people gain work experience and develop soft skills that attract future employers.

A subset of the corps, the Parks Program, places interns in public parks where they conduct habitat restoration and beautify natural areas.

Youth participating in the Parks Program work at public parks in San Francisco such as Stern Grove, Golden Gate Park, and McClaren Park. For many, this is the first meaningful time that they have spent in these parks.

“It used to be called our gardening program, and a lot of students were like, ‘What? I don’t want to do that!’ And then it’s really cool because at the end a lot of students are like, ‘You know what, this isn’t too bad,’” Enterprise for Youth project manager Peter Nicosia noted.

Following completion of the Parks Program, partnerships with SF Environment, Refuse Refuse, the Aquarium of the Bay, and other environmental organizations allow older interns to explore more specialized topics and practice working independently.

“Our hope is that from there, they are able to think about other avenues for career paths and maybe even varied interests specific to the environment,” senior project manager Talia Uribe said.

Of the many immigrant students in the San Francisco Unified School District, 55 are part of the unique Climate Career Corps’ Spanish-speaking cohort, working to maintain public parks around the city and develop professional skills.

Youth participating in the Parks Program work at public parks in San Francisco such as Stern Grove, Golden Gate Park, and McClaren Park.

Kevin Cauich Tejero, a graduate of the Career Corps who now leads the Spanish-speaking cohort, explained the motivations behind it.

“One of the things I wanted to do was create a cohort where the students are able to work regardless of their English fluency and whether they are eligible to work in the US, and they can start to dream big and see that regardless of their background or where they come from, they are able to achieve success,” Cauich Tejero said.

Indeed, that goal remains true for all of the students getting their first look at a green career this summer. Through programs hosted by Rising Sun, SVYCA, Enterprise for Youth, and many more, the next generation of climate advocates are learning field-applicable skills that will carry them forward into a job market where people and places are just as important as profit.