One of the greatest pleasures of being part of Four Green Steps is getting invited to different career fairs where we are given the chance to meet potential new interns and employees. McGill University's Mini Green Career Fair we recently attended March 14th was a great success. The enthusiasm Four Green Steps was met with was infectious! Three hours from beginning to end (this really was a Mini fair) left the three of us who attended tired with hoarse voices and sore jaws from smiling and talking so much. Needless to say we left very excited with a long list of new names to consider!
We were able to speak with so many great potential interns that are so passionate about the environment and getting a chance to glance into their futures. We also got the happy opportunity to see a past intern Dennis (pictured below), who showed up just to say hi when he saw our name listed among the organizations attending and then became a walking advertisement for becoming an intern at Four Green Steps! Dennis jumped right into conversations explaining what he did when he was with us and what a great all around experience it was because even though he accomplished a lot when he was with us he had fun, made some great new friends (his words) and will forever remain a part of Four Green Steps (that is my promise to him)!
What type of Full/Part time Intern positions can be found at Four Green Steps?
Combinations of the following:
- Marketplace
- Researchers
- Writer’s
- Social networking
- Publicity and Promotion
- Customer Service
- Accounting
- School Program
- IT, Graphic and Web Designers Technical
Internship Description
While anyone is able to apply to be an intern with our organization, we do run certified Internship programs with McGill University Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Concordia University John Molson School of Business, the David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise and Co-op and soon to be Vanier College.
We are looking for creative, dynamic interns who have a passion to make a difference with diverse skill sets and interests touching a myriad of disciplines. They should be flexible, hard working, open minded individuals who can think outside the box.
Our Interns can do research for writing articles, creating programs, marketing statistic to planning community green events and developing school programs to be added to our free school curriculum.
There is the opportunity for those interested in learning the basics of any website company; data entry, customer service, social networking, merchant research and qualification, to website management and development.
Our internship programs are tailored towards each individual intern’s interests and strengths. We will determine a mutually beneficial direction that will help focus the intern towards a path of developing on the job skills needed for future employment as well as giving them the freedom to propose new projects as the internship progresses.
We encourage our interns to become comfortable in a workplace setting by learning to set, plan, execute and meet goals. Interns will be encouraged to sit in on meetings and contribute opinions.
How to apply:
Send your CV or Resume to: info@fourgreensteps.com and in the subject line write: Internship
University Affiliations
McGill Internship Program
Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Lindsay O'Connell
Internship Officer
lindsay.oconnell@mcgill[dot]ca
John Molson Internship Program
David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise
ECO Canada
Funding for Environmental Internships
Joanna Falcone, McGill University
I am originally from Rhode Island and currently in my final year at McGill University an environmental studies major. I interned at Four Green Steps for about 4 months in 2010. As I near graduation in June, I'm looking back at what I've learned during my stint here in Montreal. Four Green Steps was a great opportunity to explore another facet of the environmental "bizz". The environment has always been a passion of mine and Four Green Steps provided me with the opportunity to share this passion with innumerable environmental enthusiasts (and maybe even some not-so-enthused-iasts) while working on articles for the InfoZone. Not only did I learn about what goes into running a website, but I was also able to investigate topics of interest that reached far beyond the realm of my academics. I explored everything from vermicomposting to ecotourism. Now 2 years later, I am graduating and moving to Colorado to work as a forestry research technician. Even though I ended up on the more outdoorsy end of the spectrum, I greatly appreciate the work experience and fantastic connections I made here at Four Green Steps!
Danielle Salley, BASc.
McGill University, Environmental Science
I had such a wonderful experience at FourGreenSteps and would highly recommend a student (or whomever) to apply for an internship! From the get-go, I was grateful for the flexibility in scheduling, as it was feasible to supplement school commitments with an intern position. I had the opportunity to learn about the environmental industry from an online perspective, amidst experienced coworkers and a highly positive atmosphere. (..Did I mention the office cookie jar?!) My main contributions revolved around researching interesting topics and writing articles for the website, and uploading and organizing new marketplace items. I also had the great fortune of heading to L.A. as a proud FourGreenSteps representative in October 2011 to partake in the Green Festival at the L.A. Convention Centre! It was an unbelievable experience; I met numerous fellow Green enthusiasts who were all incredibly excited about what FourGreenSteps has to offer!
Now, I will quit my rant, and leave you with this: my nearly two years of involvement with FourGreenSteps was a fantastic experience. I have since moved to Vancouver and have continued working in the environmental industry as an environmental consultant. Best of luck to those who apply! I hope you get it!
Jonathan Morier
McGill University, Imperial College London
Hello, my name is Jonathan Morier and I interned part-time at Four Green Steps for about a year. After graduating in 2009 from McGill University with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Biology, I started getting interested in environmental and sustainability issues. I applied to work at Four Green Steps and I clearly remember my interview with Jaye Yarrow. It went surprisingly well essentially due to the fact that Jaye was a very friendly young woman and made me feel right at ease.
The first week at 4GS, I browsed the website and Mel, the kind, patient and organized senior content director, guided me through various tasks. I did a little bit of social networking, found new “green” videos to upload to Green TV, organized and edited the information of products that were sold on the website and researched interesting environmental news to put up in the Infozone section. It was interesting to work on different tasks as it enabled me to develop various skills.
Not long after I started, I suggested creating an online book club for the website. Jaye liked the idea and gave me free rein for my project. It was quite exciting to start my very own project and see it develop from start to finish. There were some obstacles along the way but with the help of my 4GS colleagues, I eventually finished the online book club and it is still running.
Four Green Steps is a great place to do an internship. As the company keeps growing, there are many opportunities to work on various interesting projects. For a lot of jobs, work can be very repetitive and in the end, just plain boring. That doesn’t happen at Four Green Steps. The people there are friendly, young, dynamic and you can easily develop friendships, especially with the other interns. The work environment is comfortable and cosy; everyone has their own computer and desk. Jaye always makes sure there is tea, coffee and plenty of fresh cookies to go around. When she is in a very good mood, she might even bake her famous cupcakes. Bill, the founder, always pops in to say hello, have a chat or tell a joke.
I am very glad I interned at Four Green Steps. It was a very beneficial experience for me. I got along well with everyone and even asked Jaye to write some reference letters for my grad school applications. I am now doing a Master’s degree in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London.
ZhenYang (Dennis) Liu,
Major Environment, minor Life Sciences
Faculty of Science,
McGill University ‘12
His personal review: Four Green Steps provided me with an unmatched working experience in the summer of 2011. As a student intern, my duties were mainly social networking and writing editorials. The work was not monotonous because I was writing on a different topic each day. Another great thing about the internship program was its flexibility. Interns were not bounded by their everyday duties. As we got more familiar with the company, we were given the opportunity to start projects on our own. By the second half of the internship, I was already involved with two projects. One was on the promotion Four Green Steps’ publicity, and the other was on the translation of the School Programs. These projects not only enriched my experience as an intern, but also allowed me to develop team-working skills. While working with other interns as a team, I was able to know them much better. The most important aspect of an internship, in my opinion, is the people in the working environment. Everybody in the company has a fun personality as well as a positive attitude, which is why it is a pleasure to have worked and be friends with them. The people at the company created a comfortable environment to work in, as interns were respected just like employees. A summer internship at Four Green Steps is a perfect way to prepare university students entering the post-graduation job market. In addition to the fantastic experience, let us not forget the bonus of unlimited free cookies and coffee/tea provided at work! His formal review: The company I had my fabulous internship at is a place called Four Green Steps. The company hosts a website involving a combination of non-profit and profit marketing. It has four missions, which are ingeniously separated into four domains on its website: School Program, non-profit; Community, non-profit; Infozone, non-profit; and School Program, the profitable section of the website. The School Program is what Four Green Steps focuses the most on, as 50% of its profits go towards building a better environmental awareness curriculum for over 700,000 students around the globe. The Community provides a space for casual viewers to obtain useful green lifestyle tips like vegetarian recipes and green DIY projects. The Infozone is a place to read articles about environmental issues or to gain some environmental knowledge. Finally, the Marketplace boasts tens of thousands of eco-friendly products, claiming the title “Largest Green Market in the World”. I chose my employer for my internship because of the company’s dedication in making the world a better, greener place. As an intern in the content section, my main duties were to generate articles for the Infozone and social networking. Social networking was certainly one of the most entertaining duties of the internship, because I get to see many different websites. From food-related to health-related, I had viewed websites of just about any category because our Community, Infozone, and Marketplace have articles or products that are related to about any field. My goals before I started this internship were to experience real life, to know what it is like to work in a disciplined office, and improve my interpersonal skills. I have certainly achieved my goals; better yet, I even got more than I expected. Team working and interpersonal skills are a common element recruiters seek in job applicants, and Four Green Step had given me a wonderful platform to acquire these skills. “I would totally recommend other students to participate in the internship program at Four Green Steps, simply for the welcoming environment, friendly co-workers, challenging assignments, and the meaningful motivations the company envisions…the experience alone is priceless”.
ZhenYang (Dennis) Liu's poster
Ronald Ho,
Québec U2 Agricultural Economics – Environmental Economics,
McGill University ‘12
This summer I had a chance to work for Four Green Steps, an environmental social enterprise located in Montréal, Québec. The mission of Four Green Steps is to provide every type of eco-friendly and sustainable product on the market, up-to-date information on environmental topics, corporate responsibility, as well as a unique environmental curriculum for schools worldwide. Four Green Steps believes that the first step in transitioning to a greener lifestyle is to become a responsible consumer by keeping informed about relevant environmental news and science; getting involved and sharing in community discussions; and of course investing in future generations through education. These steps are reflected in the four distinct section of Four Green Steps’ website: the Marketplace, the Infozone, the Community and their School Program. I started working at Four Green Steps in early July. The first few weeks in the company were basically a learning experience where the other staff gave me a detailed guide on how the company operated. I worked mostly for the Infozone and Community zone where I wrote a number of articles regarding environmental issues and they were posted on the Four Green Steps website. In the following few weeks, more duties were allocated to me such as customer service, orders management and research on grants and sponsorships. This is probably the most rewarding part of the internship. I was also in charge of a project called Unsolicited acts of Kindness week. The main purpose of this week of kindness is to encourage everyone to show acts of kindness to people around us, including strangers. We started a facebook event page for this event and we would plant a tree for every reported acts of kindness. The event was quite successful as there were over 140 people participating worldwide. This project also made me realize there are so many tiny things that I can do for others, for the community or even for the environment. My background as an agricultural & environmental economist somewhat provides me relevant knowledge for this internship, especially when I had to write articles on environmental issues. In comparison to when I started my internship, I am now a more competent person with a much better knowledge of how social enterprise and environmental organization works. This internship has definitely equipped me better for my future career, especially in terms of jobs relating to environment, consumer products and social enterprise. In a nutshell, I would definitely recommend future students to work for Four Green Steps!
Ronald Ho's poster
Ari Lesniak,
Québec U1 Faculty Program,
Environment – Eco and Earth's Environment Domain,
McGill University ‘12
The company Four Green Steps is located in Montreal and their mission, website and name, are centered on four green steps; a green school program, a green community, a green info zone, and a green marketplace. I chose this employer for a number of reasons. I wanted to spend a summer in Montreal and wanted a job that would provide me with experience in the environmental field. Four Green Steps is a small company, which allowed me to see more aspects of the business. I started off the internship writing articles on environmental news. My favourite assignments were usually the ones with the most freedom and the most responsibility. I really liked researching advertising networks and creating a comparison chart along with proposals and reports on which I thought were the best networks. This assignment improved my understanding of online advertising as well as allowed me to be of benefit to the company and find the best service. One of my favorite experiences at the internship was the pot luck lunch we had. We all made vegan or vegetarian cuisines, many from our own cultures. Some people used the recipes on the site. It was a good bonding experience for everyone and we posted all the great pictures to the website. This type of content allowed the sites visitors to become better connected to the company. I have obtained new insights into networking and how it is a long term process and takes time to improve relationships and gain new contacts. I found that at this internship, the onus was on the intern to make the internship a valuable learning experience. A lot of the time we were creating our own opportunities and tasks that would define the internship. The more I put into each task I was given, the more I found I was able to learn about that aspect of the business. I set broad personal goals but specific enough that they were actually achievable. One of these goals was to improve my understanding of the inner workings of a business. I made sure to ask a lot of questions and when I still wasn’t sure I looked to the Internet. I think this internship helped shape what my future careers wouldn’t be rather than what it will be. It made me seriously consider starting my own business. I have always been told this is a very hard route, but at this internship I saw the passion that the founders put into the company and I wish to be able to have a similar relationship to my job.
Ari Lesniak's poster
Kai Park,
U1 Bioresource Engineering,
McGill University ‘12
Four Green Steps is a social enterprise, offering the public quick and easy access to green tips, news, and eco-friendly products to make going easy, as easy as possible. I chose Four Green Steps to serve my internship due to the responsibilities of the position that I was applying for. Briefly, the responsibilities were to help expand the company and the company’s presence on the internet and help manage the marketplace portion of the site. From the responsibilities, I aimed to learn the basic ideas to marketing and to see if it interested me, as I could potentially go down a similar path after completing my bachelors in engineering. As an Intern at Four Green Steps, I was responsible for writing articles to post on the site, finding green tips, help manage the back end of the marketplace, and contacting customers to update them about their shipments. Some highlights of my internship were the projects I worked on to promote the site. I researched how to advertise on Facebook and how effective it can be. I also listen in on the SEO (search engine optimization) meetings, learned how Google works and how companies operate to promote their site on search engines such as Google. Also, I had fun working on encouraging vendors to join our site, and give ideas on how to make our Facebook and homepage more aesthetically pleasing. I also enjoyed the company summer barbeque held at the president’s house. Coming up with ideas for Kindness week, a week where the company would plant a tree for every random act of kindness completed by a stranger, and contacting celebrities to help promote it was enjoyable. This internship helped shape my career path in a positive way. From my internship, I greatly cherished how much I improved my communication skills with people, how it helped me with stay focussed throughout the summer, increase my overall focus, and help me develop a greater sense of responsibility. I would highly recommend other students to take part in an internship as it will help the student potentially gain more knowledge in their field, learn what they like and don’t like in a job, and will help build important relationships with people that can help them advance in their careers.
Kai Park's poster
Katia Ramadori,
U1 Life Sciences,
McGill University ‘12
My name is Katia Ramadori and my areas of interest include marine biology and genetics. I am also an advocate for the environment and I believe that everyone should be aware of their impact on our planet. Therefore, I was very excited to start my internship at Four Green Steps this summer. I wanted to do my part in spreading the word on protecting our environment and why is should be everyone’s concern. Four Green Steps is located in Montréal, Canada. They are a social enterprise and offer other companies the opportunity to place their eco-friendly products on the Four Green Steps website. The website also features an Infozone where viewers can learn about current affairs in the environmental and health sectors. The Community page offers vegetarian and vegans recipes, environmental memes, and articles on health and wellness. Four Green Steps has also created a School Program, in which educators can download the free curriculum that teaches their students about the environment and how to care for it. The program is already being used by over 2 million students. The proceeds from the marketplace fund the school program. I chose to do an internship at Four Green Steps because I support their cause. They not only want to offer their customers eco-friendly products, but they also want to educate their customers as well as the future generation. I also wanted to learn more about the environment and get involved. My job at Four Green Steps was to write articles for the Infozone, create content for the Community page, and social networking as well. My academic background helped me to understand the information I needed to write well-informed articles. I also expanded on the knowledge I already had by reading about environmental issues and current affairs. I was also able to improve my writing skills and communication skills. The main goal I wanted to achieve during this internship was to write an original article, which I was able to do. My first original article was on deforestation in the Amazon. The other two original articles were written by Michelle Reeves, another intern, and myself. The first was about the Death of Evidence Rally that we attended and the second was about the Jean-Talon Farmers’ Market. I would recommend this internship to any student looking for a rewarding experience. The hours are very flexible and the atmosphere is very easy going. Jaye, my supervisor, is a wonderful employer. She is kind, compassionate, understanding, and knowledgeable. Interns are not given many specific instructions, therefore self-motivation is a must. We were not told when or how many articles to write, we had to find topics to write about and produce what we thought was an appropriate amount of articles. All in all, I had a great experience at Four Green Steps and I am grateful for the skills and knowledge I acquired this summer.
Katia Ramadori's poster
Émilie St-Hilaire,
U1 Faculty Program Environment,
Ecological Determinants of Health in Society,
McGill University ‘12
Four Green Steps is a web environmental organization created in 2008 by Jaye and Bill Yarrow. It is describes as “your one-stop destination for a greener and healthier lifestyle”. The four sections or four “steps” in the website are the School Programs, the Marketplace, the Infozone and the Community. Having completed only one semester, I wanted to learn new things during my summer job, but in a very broad way so I could discover what where my specific interests. When I visited the Green Career fair at McGill, Four Green Steps seemed like an interesting option. Aside from writing articles on environmental news, I translated some of the school programs in French. I did some social networking, where my task consisted of linking the Four Green Steps page through a social network profile (twitter, facebook, yahoo, pinterest) without being too obvious. I regularly filmed a “Green Tip of the Day”. In the office, we had a list of green tips we came up with, and every once in a while we filmed ourselves reading them in front of the camera, so we could publish one daily on the website. I participated in a “Farmers’ market” project with two other interns. We wanted to increase the global awareness about eating local and organic. We made a “guide” to help people prepare their visit to their local Farmers’ market. We went to the Jean Talon Market and interviewed a few organic farmers about local food and the benefits of eating organic. I participated in planning the “Week of Kindness”. For every person that does a random act of kindness during the week of August 13th, Four Green Steps will plant a tree in Montreal. Along with other interns, we dressed a list of people we had to contact, of ways to promoting the week on social networks to increase participation, and of ideas of random acts of kindness. The biggest challenge was to find a place where we could plant trees. In October, we will plant some trees in Mont Royal along with an organisation called “Les amis de la montagne”. My internship helped me discover my career goals, improve my English writing skills, and learn a lot about the environment and how it is present into the community. I had the opportunity to meet amazing people and hopefully increase the environmental awareness of new readers. Participating in an internship renders the participant plenty of benefits: you gain work experience in your field, discover different job opportunities, and learn from people that have similar interests to yours. It prepares you to the world after you get your degree.
Émilie St-Hilaire's poster To summarize our vision:
There is always a green alternative!
Join us in the pursuit of a greener lifestyle and a healthier planet.
