Week 1:
Orientation and Pride Picnic

June 9, 2019

This summer I am a clinical intern for Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook in Illinois. Youth Services provides a variety of services to the community, including counseling, group therapy, crisis intervention, sex education, summer camp for under-served youth, and LGBTQ+ Pride programming. I learned of this opportunity while researching LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in the Chicago area. I grew up in Schaumburg, which is about an hour from Chicago and plan to move to Chicago after I graduate, so this location is ideal for me to explore career opportunities. As a politics and Spanish major, I am very interested in community advocacy, especially within the LGBTQ+ community which I am a part of. One career path I have considered is social work and this internship will allow me hands-on insight on the sort of work social workers do and whether it is a good fit for me.

As a Pride intern, I will work on a variety of projects relating to LGBTQ+ youth. In partnership with the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, Youth Services puts on Action Camp, a 5 day leadership camp for LGBTQ+ youth throughout the state of Illinois at the beginning of August. Before my internship officially began, downtown on Friday evening I had the opportunity to meet the bright youth leaders responsible for camp workshops and programming. I look forward to helping them plan Action Camp this summer.

For the first time this year, Youth Services is putting on Camp Pride, a weekly evening camp for LGBTQ+ middle and high schoolers. I will be assisting with three programs, Trail Mix, Active, and Create. Trail Mix involves outdoor activities, Active is about movement, and Create is a collection of arts-based activities.

My orientation week at Youth Services was a bit quieter than the norm as it was during the break between school-year and summer programming. I spent most of my week meeting all of the friendly staff, learning the computer and client record system, familiarizing myself with the beautiful facility, and helping prepare for the Pride Picnic at the end of the week.

The Pride Picnic was Youth Service’s community celebration at the start of Pride month and an open house of all the LGBTQ+ programs and services we offer. One of my projects this week was to create a tri-fold exhibiting all of the events and activities Pride did this past year. It was an excellent opportunity to learn about the work Youth Services does and admire the fantastic graphic design skills of their youth leaders.

At the Pride Picnic, we had lawn games, snow cones, ice cream and taco trucks, tie dye, and other traditional picnic activities. Community members from all over volunteered to run many of the stations, and I had the opportunity to briefly chat with the lovely librarians from the Wilmette and Glenview public libraries. They also provided us with LGBTQ+ reading lists that you can find here and here. The picnic gave me an opportunity to interact more with other staff, interns, volunteers, and youth.

Overall, this week was a lovely introduction to Youth Services. Next week we have the all counselor training for Action Camp, which I look forward to as I will get to know the Youth Leaders more and learn more about the program.