Youth Safeguarding & Autonomy Intern

Ashoka • Arlington, VA

9d • Remote

About The Position

Ashoka is seeking a thoughtful and proactive intern to support our Youth Safeguarding team. This role sits at the intersection of safety, youth agency, and systems change. You will help strengthen how organizations create environments where young people are both supported and trusted to lead. This is an opportunity to contribute to a growing field that is rethinking what “safe†means in youth-serving spaces. Rather than defaulting to control and restriction, our work centers trust, autonomy, and shared responsibility.

Requirements

• Care deeply about young people and believe in their ability to lead and create change
• Curious about how systems work and motivated to challenge assumptions, especially around risk, safety, and control
• Strong researcher and clear writer, able to synthesize complex ideas into actionable insights
• Comfortable working independently in a remote environment and collaborating across a distributed team
• Thoughtful, reflective approach and are open to learning from young people as co-leaders
• Driven, well-organized, and detail-oriented while finding fun opportunities to innovate every day
• Ability to go deep...into a model, into a field, into an idea
• Comfortable working in ambiguity. Experience making something ambiguous concrete and actionable
• Self-motivation and an entrepreneurial ability
• Can work independently in a collaborative, creative environment
• Desire to cause systemic change
• Must be based in the United States
• Must be able to pass a US background check

Responsibilities

• 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

Benefits

• 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
• Support in meeting the requisites of school paid internships at your university

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: No Education Listed