Goals
To gain hands-on career experience, learn from dedicated mentors, and simultaneously develop tangible skills to take home.
Techniques
Project-based learning opportunities in permaculture, agroforestry, and tourism management.
Integration
Make a change through working on real projects and interacting with a motivated community on an established permaculture farm.
Once in a Lifetime Opportunity!
As an extended intern, you will live and work alongside our Big Island Farm staff. This opportunity will allow you to gain hands-on career experience, learn from dedicated mentors, and simultaneously develop tangible skills to take home.
We are looking for applicants who genuinely desire to live in harmony with the land and become a part of our hardworking community. You must be self-motivated, work well in a collective, and have a positive attitude.
We will work with you to make sure you get the most out of your time with us and that your project will be related to your area of interest. Our program style is based on experiential education and practical skill-building. We are currently offering project-based learning opportunities in permaculture, agroforestry, and tourism management. As an extended intern, 70% of your time will be focusing on your project, while the other 30% will be working in our food forest, macadamia nut orchard, and in our organic gardens.
Positions
Culinary Art Intern
As a culinary intern, you will enhance your expertise in creating delicious farm to table meals and baked goods. You will have the opportunity to assist in the creation of new recipes for our vegan cafe, learn how to build profit and loss reports for the items you create, manage our farmers market booth, and teach our farm to table classes. In this position you will not only improve your skills as a culinary artist but in business management as well.
Permaculture Intern
As a permaculture intern, you will have the chance to learn the ins and outs of what it takes to run and maintain a farm. From building new food forests to maintaining the existing ones, you will be focused on understanding the fundamental steps to build a sustainable and edible ecosystem properly. Interns in this program will be creating rotation charts, seed saving logs, and managing the greenhouse.
Agroforestry Intern
As an agroforestry intern, you will be focused on removing invasive species in our macadamia nut orchard. Building pest management logs. Building trails to facilitate access to our waterfall area. We will also train you to operate and maintain heavy machinery such as a wood chipper, chainsaw, weedwhacker, and more.
Marketing / Eco - Tourism Management Intern
As a marketing/eco-tourism intern, your focus will be to support our current educational farm tour program, work closely with the funders on building marketing plans, extending our outreach to the targeting audience. You will also learn to manage our farm shop and help grow our herbal health product line. (Options within this program are video production and art mural design)
College Credit
We are more than happy to work with your professors and institution to make sure you can receive college credit for your internship. We have staff on-site who can assist with all your forms and paperwork to make sure you stay on track with your academic requirements.
Accommodations
You will be staying in our Bali hut; we only have 2 of those private accommodations on our farm, which are reserved for long-term interns. Each hut has two single beds, a side dresser, a mini-fridge, and a nice deck. They each have a separate shower and a shared composting toilet. Max occupancy is two people per unit, for a total of 4 long-term interns.
Food
You will have access to a fully equipped outdoor kitchen and share community meals with our farm helpers and staff during your stay. We have a community meal program where everyone contributes to cooking, prepping, and cleaning. The farm will supply fresh veggies, seasonal fruits, and other staple foods. Please note our food program is primarily vegan/vegetarian.
Cost*: $775/month – minimum of 3-month stay (all-inclusive with airport pick up and drop off)
Ready to apply?
apply*Please note that accommodations for extended interns in our Bali huts are subject to be shared. In the event that an intern is assigned to a shared room, the monthly price for accommodations will be reduced to $645/month.All interns will be on a two week trial period. During this time, BIF will evaluate the intern’s performance and determine if the relationship is mutually beneficial. On the rare occasion that the BIF staff concludes that is not, we will provide the intern with 2 week notice and the intern’s program may be cancelled.