2026 FL-DSSG Summer Internship

While the military community is a vital part of Northeast Florida, military-connected children face unique challenges that can disrupt their social, emotional, and educational development. Many military children attend six to nine different schools before graduation, while deployments and extended family separations often contribute to increased anxiety, behavioral challenges, academic difficulties, and feelings of isolation.

The Cathedral Arts Project (CAP) provides targeted outreach and support through its Brave HeARTS Program, which is designed to strengthen engagement and mental focus. The program's four-pillar approach reaches children both in and out of school through initiatives such as arts integration within Purple Star Schools, programming at the Mayport Child Development Center (CDC), Military Family Day events, and summer camp opportunities. The "wicked problem" is that no single organization can eliminate the inherent disruptions of military life; however, community organizations like CAP play a vital role in helping military-connected children engage in the arts, form social connections, and build a sense of belonging within Jacksonville.

CAP is seeking support from DSSG in turning its Brave HeARTs data into clear evidence of the program’s value for military-connected students and families. Because CAP hopes to use this evidence to strengthen future funding requests (especially support from the City of Jacksonville), the goal is to show not only that Brave HeARTs is being used, but that it is making a meaningful difference.

The Community Foundation of North Central Florida is a philanthropic organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in the region. The Foundation works to connect donors with opportunities to make a meaningful, lasting impact in the local community.

Across North Central Florida, nonprofits, funders, policymakers, and civic leaders rely on community indicators (developed by mySideWalk) to understand trends in education, health, housing, economic mobility, and quality of life. However, most publicly available indicator systems rely primarily on national or state-level datasets that fail to capture the unique realities, disparities, and emerging issues within our local area. As a result, current indicators do not fully reflect residents' lived experiences or the on-the-ground work of nonprofits serving the region. The Foundation collects rich local data via the Philanthropy Hub regarding nonprofit capacity, funding trends, community needs, program outcomes, and cross-sector challenges. This information represents an untapped opportunity to strengthen existing community indicators with localized, real-time insights.

Communities are increasingly expected to make decisions based on reliable evidence, yet many local leaders lack access to integrated data that reflects the actual conditions of the people they serve. The challenge lies in effectively integrating these local datasets with existing public data systems and visualizing them in ways that are accessible, reliable, and actionable. FL-DSSG is tasked with developing a robust methodology to integrate this locally collected data into the broader Community Indicators framework.