Serve with Us

Each year, exceptional Servant Leader Interns are selected as Ella Baker Trainers (EBTs) to lead the Ella Baker Child Policy Training Institutes, provide technical support for new sites, and teach Servant Leader Interns how to deliver key program components.

2024-2025 Ella Baker Trainer Application Process Is Now Open

Click here for an overview of the application process. Click here for an overview of the position.

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Become an Ella Baker Trainer

Each year, exceptional Servant Leader Interns (SLIs) are selected as Ella Baker Trainers (EBTs) to lead the Ella Baker Child Policy Training Institute, provide technical support for new sites, and teach SLIs to deliver key program components. EBTs can train in the CDF Freedom Schools® program officially for three years, but many commit a lifetime of service to their communities.

Ella Baker Trainers

Highlights from the 2024 National Training

Our History

For Ella’s Sake

Ella Josephine Baker was an integral leader in the Civil Rights Movement, organizing and mentoring hundreds of young people. Often a powerful behind-the-scenes advisor to close colleagues like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker believed in shared leadership and encouraged young people to find and lift their own voices. She understood the need for hard, daily, persistent work, and was an institution builder.

Serve as an Ella Baker Trainer

Today, Children’s Defense Fund honors Ella’s legacy and her lessons through our Ella Baker Child Policy Institute, through which more than 15,000 college students and recent graduates have been trained by the Ella Baker Trainers to deliver the Integrated Reading Curriculum (IRC) and to make learning fun for children.

EBTs can train in the CDF Freedom Schools program officially for 3 years, but many commit a lifetime of service to their communities. EBTs serve as pillars of the CDF Freedom Schools movement.

Take your service with the CDF Freedom Schools program and movement to the next level by becoming an Ella Baker Trainer.

Please direct all inquiries to Bridget G. Hall and Joy Masha.

Questions? Contact the National CDF Freedom Schools® Team

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