Capacity Intern, Invest

This is a hybrid position which requires 8 days per month in the office. You will be based in our office in Washington DC. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission as WRI is unable to sponsor any visa work sponsorship for this position. To be eligible for this position, you must be a resident of DC, Maryland or Virginia at the start of employment.

About the Program:
 

WRI’s Global Restoration Initiative informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land. The team focuses much of its support on locally led enterprises and community non-profits, currently financing, training, and monitoring 600+ growing organizations across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.   In Africa, TerraFund for AFR100 finances 200+ organizations through grants, low-interest loans, and equity investments with a focus on the Lake Kivu & Rusizi River Basin in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda; the Greater Rift Valley of Kenya; and the Ghana Cocoa Belt. To build this pipeline of champions ready for investment, WRI has trained more than 400 organizations in Africa, Brazil, and India through the Land Accelerator, which teaches the fundamentals of financial management, pitching, and monitoring and evaluation.

These portfolios for funding and capacity building are built through the TerraMatch platform, an end-to-end system that hosts calls for proposals, connects champions with technical assistance, and tracks the progress of funded projects through a standard monitoring, reporting, and verification protocol. The Global Restoration Initiative Land Accelerator program and TerraFund team are currently working to integrate the strategy and tools for the capacity building and technical assistance offerings for restoration champions. The team is now seeking to develop and test online and hybrid capacity building tools and approaches together with new and existing partners. These new initiatives involve targeted curriculums and offerings on a series of topics, based on the priorities and feedback from restoration champions. The selected intern will play an important role in this emerging strategy, including the development, launch, and implementation.

This position is hybrid and will require a few days per week in our Washington DC office.

What you will do:

In this role, you will learn about local businesses and nonprofits that operate in the rapidly maturing land restoration sector. You will connect with innovative locally led restoration businesses and nonprofits, learn about the financial mechanisms and capacity building initiatives that support them, and contribute to the team’s evolving strategy. You will also provide programmatic support to the TerraFund and Land Accelerator capacity programs by attending team calls, coordinating amongst team members, supporting on partner management, creating materials for an emerging capacity building initiative and online learning hub, and drafting communications and articles. You will learn about and contribute to curriculum building on a variety of topics, including entrepreneurship, restoration best practices, proposal writing, high-impact carbon finance, and more. You will work with the capacity team but receive support from the broader TerraFund team. You will report to the Capacity & Innovation Manager.

Internship Learning Outcomes:

• Research on restoration finance and capacity building, working with your manager to choose a topic of interest to you and the team.

• Creating materials for the launch of an online learning hub.

• Collecting & analyzing the results of capacity surveys and feedback forms for the new initiatives.

• Supporting the creation of an application and vetting framework for capacity building opportunities & review project developer applications.

• Support the creation of technical assistances programs and participate in partnership development.

• Contributing to the planning and implementation of online learning courses and their associated curriculums.

• Supporting the development and execution of communications and engagement plan for restoration champions who will participate in capacity building initiatives and programs.

• Work on communication products to help showcase restorat