The internship projects listed below are overviews of a sample of the internship possibilities for Spring 2026. They are placed under the (bolded) major categories of focus of the Insititue.

The Human Condition (HC)

I. Internship #IHC1: Human Trafficking

• Who is doing it

• How many people are trafficked each year?

• Where are they trafficked?

• How are they trafficked?

• Trafficking methods

  • Recruitment

  • Transportation

  • Coercion mechanisms

  • Digital utilization

• Who are the users?

  • Who benefits and who pays

  • What do governments know and what do governments do?

  • What do governments fund to stop trafficking?

  • Who else is working to stop it?

• How is trafficking tracked, measured, and reported?

  • Who is prosecuted and where are the gaps?

III. Internship #IHC2: Human Enslavement, past and present

• A complete history: from its beginnings to the modern day

  • Where did slavery occur and where is it occurring now?

    • Who has been enslaved and how did they become enslaved?

  • Who are the current day slaveholders?

  • How are people getting slaves?

  • How has slavery been eradicated over time?

Education

Internship #IEd1: Weekly quiz development and presentatio

• Develop quizzes each week in three of Institute’s areas of focus

  • Ensure quizzes present unique information with mind-changing, eye-opening information grounded in reliable sources.

  • Provide answer keys with two-three sentence explanations, along with citations.

• Post quizzes every Monday morning at 9:00am

• Market quizzes to teachers in middle- and high school, as well as to college and university professors in disciplines related ot our work.

Economics

Internship #IEc1: Building partnerships for the Five-Years-or-Less poverty plan.

• Deliverables: Outreach templates, and partnership tracker

Internship #IEc2: In-depth research of the Poverty Industrial Complex.

• What is the Poverty Industrial Complex

• What was promised as each government welfare program was initiated? (compile the speeches made or documents written to introduce and pass the legislation)

  • What was supposed to be temporary, or time-based, and what was supposed to be permanent?

  • What have the results been in each area of poverty over time?

    • Costs and outcomes

• Who makes a living off of poverty?

  • Public/government executives and departments

  • Poverty nonprofits: wages, revenues, outcomes, and accountability

Deliverables: a reading list with summaries, and a findings brief with an incentives map.

Science

Internship S1: Death, consciousness and dimensions:

What we think

What we know

What is knowable given our technology and methods of inquiry

Internship S2: Valid or invalid? Examining the data on theoretical sciences of the past 100 years.

Deliverables: literature reviews, glossaries, comparison charts, and timelines

Health

Internship H1: Energy and healing

Deliverables: explanation glossary, and a comparison chart on what is supported, uncertain, or unsupported.

Technology

Internship T1: Applying the most advanced technology to the institute’s research and programs

Culture

Internship C1:

Internship C2: A look at how cultural narratives, media, and social norms shape public understanding of poverty, trafficking, and human well-being.

Consciousness

Create a clear framework for studying consciousness, including definitions, major schools of thought, and methodological limits.

Please note that The Bergel Institute expects that interns will not use any AI when submitting cover letters or other materials. During the internship, it will be important to not submit work that is generated by ChatGPT. Interns are expected to produce work that reflects their own analysis, and writing.

Poverty in the United States