<aside> 🎉 Welcome! As a new Policy Intern, please read through this document to get acquainted with our organization, mission, vision, values, and how to start getting involved.

</aside>

📖 Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Our Values
   2. Organizational Structure
2. How to Get Involved (You Choose!)
   1. Projects
   2. Other Important Links
3. Wrapping Up

🤝 Introduction

Our Values

• Participation. We ask that you, as a Policy for the People Intern, be proactive in your approach to interning: ask lots of questions (if needed), get to know your fellow Interns (and Organizers), and have some independence in your task-completing/learning processes (to challenge yourself).
• Inclusion. As a Policy for the People Intern, we ask that you are fully respectful towards everyone individual within workspace, so as to maintain the professional and supportive work environment we uphold — regardless of whether the individual is a volunteer or participant. In particular, we look for ways to support immigrant, PoC, LGBTQ+, and other traditionally-marginalized communities, in all Policy for the People-affiliated activities. Although the general content, instructions, and meetings will be in English and primarily focus on U.S. education systems, we aim for the educational material to overall be intersectional and beneficial to any Intern. We empower multiple perspectives on the redefining of policy questions. Therefore, given the subjective and contextual nature of public policy, we exclude nobody nor anything that follows our Code of Conduct (Tl;DR: Be nice).
• Transparency. As a Policy for the People Intern, we ask that you practice open and honest communication within each of our organizational workspaces. As for the Discord server, the center of events like our upcoming High School (Education) Policython, is in fact our public forum channel (#public-forum). In this messaging channel, we encourage resource and idea sharing, collaboration, as well as reciprocation of feedback. To encourage collaboration, we are allowing individuals to either a) register with their own, pre-existing team (maximum of 4 team members total), or b) use Discord channels like #public-forum to network, chat, and find teammates before the event. Once the writing process is over, all final submissions will be reviewed by Policython judges in order to determine award allotments. As per the conclusion of the High School (Education) Policython, there will be a repository consisting of all submitted pieces, as well as webinar recordings of speaker events — so as to provide participants (and the general public) with an open-sourced, informative “recap” of the event.
• Accountability. As a Policy for the People Intern, we ask that you consistently complete tasks, as well as attend/participate in our daily meetings, as much as you are able to. If you are not able to satisfy these asks, do let an Organizer within the Discord workspace know. In efforts to facilitate a consistently productive workflow, the High School (Education) Policython has established teams, and their respective team leads, in order to spearhead various tasks on a more granular, close-knit scale. Fundamental to our Policython are the problem statements, which introduce and describe the issues that have risen within present-day education systems. Said issues are to be addressed in the participant’s policy brief (proposal) submission. Policy briefs may be no more than 2,000 words in length (not including references or illustration captions), and may contain up to 6 exhibits. Before judging, we will provide a template for PDF versions of the proposals to be sent out to relevant policymakers. All submissions must follow Harvard College Honor Code standards regarding Academic Integrity, including the proper citation of all source materials.

Tl;dr: communicate (These values were adopted from Taiwan's G0v hackathons)

Organizational structure

• Policy for the People is under the nonprofit umbrella organization Erevna, founded by Lucas Chu. Read more about Erevna here: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/erevna.

• At the functional level, we have team leads, who ****help to organize, assign, and define the goals, objectives, and tasks for their respective teams. Teams within Policy for the People are typically assembled when preparing for an event, such as the High School (Education) Policython. Teams include: Marketing, Website & Design, Partnerships & Sponsorships, Content, and Operations.

  For the Education Policython, we had the following leads, with Pandemic Policython leads in parantheses.

  • Marketing & Publicity: Aavaiz (Scott)
    • Responsible for sign-ups. Sends out emails and press releases.
  • Website & Design: BJ (Anson)
    • Responsible for providing content for sign-ups. Maintains our website, figma, and social media.
  • Logistics & Operations: Lucas (Lucas/Ethan)
    • Responsible for meetings, minutes, and members. On-boards, helps, and orients members.
  • Partnerships & Mentors: Lucas (Lucas/Ethan)
    • Responsible for anyone participants speak to. Gets speakers, mentors, and judges.
  • Content: Zoe (Himani)
    • Responsible for anything participants read. Collects resources, develops problem statements, and helps to write copy for all the other teams.

Past Projects

1. Pandemic Policython
2. Students Improving School
3. Education Policython - Join us for the Education Policython to re-envision the education system. Students in teams of 1-4 will explore ideas on improving their local schools and the latest research on how didactic activities may be altered to reinforce their learning. We invite all students from various backgrounds and all ages, especially high schoolers and under-represented minorities.
4. Merge Hackathon