The Caribbean Internship Project (CIP) is a partnership established between the Caribbean Support Initiative and the Centre for Population Community and Social Change (CPCSC), which utilises the concept of student internship implementing CSI’s strategies of work with its partner agencies in the regio

The purpose of the Caribbean Internship is to match the needs of resources of tertiary institutions with those of parenting support and ECD agencies.

Objectives

• To match the resources of the UWI to the needs of local partner agencies with relevant mandates, capacity and services delivered to parents and children.

• To provide learning and practice opportunities for Caribbean students

• To improve the capacity of local parent support and child focused agencies to deliver services through training to improve competency of agency staff

Students internships are required activities for obtaining degrees in the fields of Social Work and Education in particular. Based on performance, the students are graded by agency supervisors who must meet UWI qualifications and who must complete an evaluation form designed by the UWI for students.

However, the CIP Project will consider two categories of interns (a) undergraduate and masters students and (b) recent graduates of master’s programmes from various disciplines. In this way students who have completed a master’s programme will be available to serve the project at various times throughout the year and for longer periods. The specialised area of learning would also benefit the student’s experience prior to entry into the world of work.

The internship project will also make provisions to respond to request to other CSI projects’ needs for students.

The potential overall benefits of the proposed Caribbean Student Internship Project includes

• Assisting regional development in a cost effective way by utilising the concept of student internship, which places students from the UWI in social service agencies in the region

• Implementing and assisting the implementation of strategies articulated by the CSI to benefit parenting and early childhood development. Included are the use of storytelling, the replication of the Roving Caregivers project and research.

• Assisting those regional territories, which do not have the benefit of student placement, in the delivery of social services

• Capacity building of local organisations

• Enhanced student learning of theories and practice skills

• Creating Caribbean integration through new experiences for students not otherwise exposed to the way of life and culture of their Caribbean counterparts

• Research and documentation of behavioural patterns to enable the design of relevant intervention strategies and to enable and empower individual and community action

• Research and documentation of practices and strategies utilised to identify best practices

• Informing policy direction through research, presentation of papers at conferences and the involvement of regional governments in the work of the CSI.

Project Implementation

The experiences in 2004 placements will be used to assist in determining placements for 2005 and 2006. The project will therefore be approached in a staggered way to ensure that sufficient time is given to make relevant contact and changes to the approach used in 2004 in order to enhance and strengthen the project in the subsequent yeas. Phase 1 2004 will therefore be implemented on a smaller scale to allow for further ground work and scrutiny to be done.

Project Co- ordination

Mrs. Aldene Shillingford of UWI Mona is the Project Coordinator for the CIP.

Project Management

The Centre for Population, Community and Social Wok, headed by Dr. Ian Boxil, will act as the grant holder and administrator of the Caribbean Internship Project. Within the Centre, an Advisory Committee, comprising representatives form the CSI, Education, Media, Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, will supervise decisions taken re the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the project. The Committee will work closely with the Project Coordinator and a Project Assistant. The Centre’s Management Committee on the other hand will supervise the reporting format, fund disbursement and financial audits.

For Further Information contact
Mrs. Aldene Shillingford
CIP Project Coordinator
Tel: (876) 970 4336
Fax: (876) 977 9301