Hi everyone! I hope everyone’s doing well! 🙂

I want to share a bit about my internship at Stan State. As a social work graduate student, I am expected to complete certain hours in a social work service/agency for a total of 16 hours a week throughout the entire school year. Last year I was interning at an agency off-campus doing housing security work, this year I’ll be interning at Stan State’s Basic Needs Program!

The Basic Needs Program is a service at Stan that assists students through financially struggling times. Universities across the U.S. have basic needs programs. Some are extremely established, with years of guaranteed funding and permanent staff, and others run on a volunteer basis. There is no universal way to administer a basic needs program since every school, region, and truly academic year is so different and with a population of students with various needs.

I’ve worked in basic needs efforts throughout my undergrad and am always a tad shocked when I remind myself Stan State’s basic needs program is only two years old! It has existed in other capacities in the past, spread throughout campus, but has only recently been institutionalized into one department. It is still growing, yet already doing great work that I would expect to take years to materialize elsewhere. I’ve only been interning for a few weeks, and from home due to COVID safety guidelines, but from what I have learned, the Basic Needs Program is such a resourceful service for students!

This pandemic has shown us how quickly our lives and more specifically, our sense of security can change in only a matter of days. I’m glad to be a part of one of the structures at Stan State that work to help students through stressful times. The Basic Needs Program offers students an array of services and knowing the Master of Social Work program is involved directly with the program makes me really optimistic of its growth and delivery of student support.

I’ll leave a link below for reference and hope you check it out and share with your friends/peers. Becoming knowledgable of student services that exist to help you during your time as a student is a great practice to equip yourself with :)!

https://www.csustan.edu/basic-needs