8 Weeks + 50 Interns = A Summer That Counts

This has been a hard year for nonprofits, and youth programs have felt it as much as anyone. When federal funding gets cut, the strain doesn't stay with the organizations that lose their grants. It trickles down. Money gets tighter across the whole sector, including for groups like Catalyst Youth Network that take no federal money at all. Some good programs couldn't make the summer work this year.

We were able to run CareerBridge with 50 paid interns, the most we've had. A handful of them are here because the program they'd counted on had to close, and we were glad there was room for them. Every one of these internships is paid. On August 5, they'll show you what they did with eight weeks.

Why paid matters

There are free internships out there. For a lot of our students, free isn't an option. The stipend is about access more than hours. Some of these students couldn't say yes to the summer at all if there were no pay attached to it. A paid internship is what lets a young person spend the summer learning instead of scrambling for whatever job covers the bus fare.

Here's the work.

Caltrans

Twenty-three interns spent the summer at Caltrans District 4, placed across departments: environmental, construction, right of way, IT, legal, external affairs, and more. Most people don't know this part. Caltrans doesn't run its own internship program. We do. Catalyst is the framework that lets a state agency take on young interns at all, and it makes our partnership with them worth a real amount to both sides.

The internship aims to be roughly half job shadowing and half project work. Interns sit in on meetings, follow staff through their week, and get handed real assignments. One intern told us the moment the work clicked was helping design a transit map: "Mapping areas for transit is something that I would like to do as part of my future career."

Innovation Lab

The Innovation Lab ran like a design studio. In the first stretch, the 13 interns picked a problem young people actually face and care about. They landed on two. One group went after mental health: the link between substance use and mental health, and the stigma that keeps some families and cultures from talking about any of it. The other went after access to college and careers.

From there they wrote "how might we" statements, ran user interviews (at least ten each), built prototypes, and tested them on real users. They're now stitching the strongest ideas into tools Catalyst can pick up and use. The problems they chose are the same ones Catalyst works on every day. That wasn't an accident.

Entrepreneurship Lab

The 10 Entrepreneurship Lab interns each started with a business idea aimed at a real problem in the world, then built it into a business plan and a lean canvas. The point wasn't to launch a company by August. It was to learn how a business actually gets built: who it's for, what problem it solves, why anyone would pay for it, and where the idea falls apart under a hard question. By the end, each intern could walk you through their own venture and defend the thinking behind it. For most of them it was the first time an adult treated their idea like it might be worth money.

Children Rising

Three interns worked out of the Children Rising office, helping the Path to Math team get its fall tutoring program ready to launch. They built and designed curriculum, assembled student packets, and did the administrative and design work a nonprofit needs to run a program. One intern who spent a past summer working with kids said the part she carried with her was connecting with the shy students, watching them open up and smile.

Legal fellowship

One of our alumni, now a leadership student, is spending the summer in a legal fellowship through CYDL's Youth Development Through Law program. She meets with their team at UC Berkeley School of Law, spends her weeks in law offices alongside working lawyers, and is preparing a mock trial.

Student Ambassadors

Three interns were selected as Student Ambassadors, a role our team built this year. On top of their regular internships, they ran a mini marketing operation: shooting and editing video, making content, and telling the other interns' stories as the summer happened. Most of what you've seen from us this season came from them.

The gap is getting wider

The supports students used to count on are thinning out. High schools around the Bay Area are losing college advisors to budget cuts. The internships that open a door draw hundreds of applications for a handful of seats, and those seats tend to go to students who already have the connections to find them.

The interns in this year's Innovation Lab named it themselves. One wrote about the college advising groups pulling out of their school and others nearby: "advisors are leaving multiple schools across the Bay Area ... including schools in Oakland." Another, set on a career in medicine, put the whole thing in one line: "No student's future should depend on luck or connections."

That is the gap Catalyst was built to close. When the supports fall away, someone has to catch the students who would otherwise slip through. That is the work.

What they told us

Near the end of one workshop, we asked the interns to name one brave thing they'd do that week. We expected a range of answers. Most of them wrote a version of the same thing: ask for help.

• "Ask for more help at Caltrans instead of sitting there doing nothing."

• "Ask for help on how to use GIS to the best of my abilities."

• "Ask my mentor about internships I can do during the school year."

For a lot of young people, asking for help in a professional setting is the hardest thing there is. Watching them decide to do it anyway is most of the job.

We've seen where this leads

This spring, Catalyst ran CareerCon, connecting students with professionals to talk about college, careers, and life after high school. Afterward, 95% of students said it gave them greater clarity about their career path, self-reported career readiness rose from 2.9 to 4.2 out of 5, and 68% gave it the highest recommendation score possible.

Come see it

On August 5, the interns run the night. There's no head table and no slideshow from the staff. They stand at their own tables, walk you through what they built, and tell you what the summer taught them. Family, mentors, employers, partners, anyone who wants to see the work: come.

Wednesday, August 5, 2026, 5:30 PM. 2619 Broadway, Oakland. Admission is free, registration required.

 [ Register for August 5 ]

Every one of these internships is paid, and we're still raising this year's stipends. It costs about $1,200 to fund one student's summer, and your gift goes straight to a 2026 CareerBridge intern. If you can give, thank you. If you can't, being in the room on the 5th is enough.

 [ Give now ]