Rather than wait tables or work in retail, an intern in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) Washington, D.C. office this fall is using crowdfunding to support her semester in the nation’s capital.
Jessica Padron, a 20-year-old student at the University of Nevada – launched the “Latina Leadership Fund – Dreams and Political Aspirations” campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo.com shortly after finding out she was accepted into the internship program in Reid’s office. She is hoping to raise $6,500 to pay for housing, food, transportation and incidentals during her four months in D.C.
“I am looking forward to continuing my growth in politics and would like to seize this opportunity to work as an up and coming female leader in a Congressional office that has reached out to me in helping me grow from my accomplishments thus far,” Padron wrote on the IndieGoGo page.
Padron, who is studying international relations and foreign affairs majors at UNLV, is the first in her family to attend college. She has been involved in politics since she was a child, when she would go with her mother to make calls for then-Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Padron has also managed a successful state assembly campaign and was the senior program manager at the Nevada Youth Coalition, a nonprofit group geared towards keeping young people engaged in community and civic projects. She hopes to one day be a politician herself.
She acknowledged on her fundraising page that she is prepared to take out loans to cover the cost of the semester should she fail to raise her $6,500 goal. With 10 days left to go she is just under $1,600 shy of that mark.
Originally Padron noted on her IndieGoGo page that she would be working in Sen. Reid’s office, however she has since taken that reference down to avoid breaking any rules regarding the standards set up for the internship. She has also stopped seeking press for the fundraising campaign.
“There is a statue or a code of ethics that an intern or any staffer can’t use the name of the office [when fundraising],” she told ABC News. “I don’t want to break any rules.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, internships that are “for the benefit of the intern” and are “similar to training which would be given in an educational environment” are eligible to be unpaid internships.
