Refuge receives second internship fund
Jim and Liz Birmingham, of Sanibel and Colorado, recently made a donation in support of an annual internship for the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. The Birminghams have been coming to Sanibel for many years and believe in the importance of supporting the communities they live in.
The 2021-22 Birmingham Internship Fund will underwrite one of the three conservation education interns coming to work at the refuge.
The Birminghams, who are regular visitors to the refuge, were influenced to make their contribution after reading about the Annual Suzanne M. Dubuc Education Internship, which supported the cost of a bilingual education intern this season to facilitate the rollout and continuing educational efforts of the refuge’s Wildlife on Wheels mobile urban classroom.
“After meeting some of the interns and WoW team, the Birminghams were so impressed by how an intern can make such a huge difference in the educational outreach to students and hard-to-reach communities,” Birgie Miller, executive director of the “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society-Friends of the Refuge — which supports the WoW, interns, land acquisition and other refuge efforts through philanthropic fundraising — said. “They contacted us about how they could make a similar impact on the refuge’s mission and underwrite the cost of a year for an internship.”
The DDWS provides living stipends and other benefits for about a dozen interns each year. The refuge supports interns with free housing.
The DDWS is now accepting donations for future named internships at $12,500 a year, which is the cost for supporting one intern including living stipends, travel, tolls, Sanibel Recreation Center membership and other expenses. For more information, contact DDWS Associate Director Lynnae Messina at 239-472-1100 ext. 233.
Donors are able to also establish other named, permanently endowed funds for $10,000 or more and work with staff to restrict them to their areas of interest. Income from the endowments can fund individual projects or ongoing education, intern, programming, research, or other specific needs.