Sometimes people ask us “who is SEED?” and generally what they are asking is who works for SEED. Of course, there are many answers to that question. One accurate answer for the past three months, however, was that Amberstarr Lumsey was working for SEED.

Amberstarr is a business student at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. She wants to find a way to use business to serve God. That may mean simply being a follower of Jesus in corporate America, but when the SEED internship possibility came up, she was very excited to learn of another possible model: doing business for a faith-based nonprofit — and one focused on helping groups start, establish, and expand their own businesses!

For the first month of her internship, co-directors David and Rose Brewer spent time exposing Amberstarr to all the various aspects of SEED’s work: marketing, administration, human resources, merchandising, bookkeeping, partnership, and the like. Amberstaff was taking an entrepreneurship class and told us that through her internship she got full exposure to what it really meant to be an entrepreneur: you do some of everything.

Once she had a feel for who we are and how we do things, Amberstarr was able to contribute in many ways, small and large. She helped work a SEED table where we were presenting; she helped update inventory numbers and sort product; she helped reconcile our elements of our accounting system; and she did research into an appropriate technology solution for one specific issue we were facing. (I might add that we have already implemented part of the solution she found, and it’s making life easier!)

In our final debrief, both Amberstarr as intern and David and Rose as directors were very positive about the internship. What a great opportunity to pour into a young leader while providing opportunity for her to get real experience doing value-add work.

After all, that’s kind of who SEED is, isn’t it?