Housing Works Internships

Homelessness is pretty terrible, but the problems that it leads to can be even worse. One of those problems is often AIDS. Housing Works is a New York City based non-profit that “provides homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families with housing, meals, medical care, drug treatment, social support, employment opportunities and other lifesaving services.” The cool thing is the scale that they’re doing this on—they are “the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the United States.” That means that since 1990 they’ve served more than 20,000 New Yorkers.

Make Housing Works Work for You

What allows Housing Works to operate on such a large scale (they did $40 million in revenue last year) is their smart approach to fundraising. They run a number of social enterprise businesses that include a chain of thrift shops and a used bookstore/café. These businesses tie into the Housing Works mission because they create jobs for the individuals that Housing Works aims to help. It’s a fantastic model that seems to be extremely effective. If this sounds like something that you’d want to be a part of, then check out Housing Works’ Jobs page, or better yet, check out their Internship postings on Idealist. Right now they have two positions posted: Volunteer Program Internand Design Intern. Both are unpaid, and the application instructions vary, so be sure to check out the full descriptions.