From Virudhanagar district’s Coffee with Collector initiative to the internship programme started by the District Collector of Tiravallur, Dr. Alby John, IAS, administrators in Tamil Nadu are setting examples of introducing the youth to administration and policy implementation. The District Development Internship Programme, which started in Tiravallur, a few days back is one such initiative through which the young minds will be involved in the developmental process and taught to create solutions to real-time problems.

The district administration of Tiravallur is expecting young interns to bring passion and energy into implementation of high impact solutions to address district-level problems during the internship. For that, the administration has created certain eligibility criteria, on the basis of which five candidates will be selected for this three-month internship programme. It will be a paid internship where the candidates will be given a stipend of Rs. 10,000.

THE VISION

While speaking about the programme, Dr. Alby John told Indian Masterminds, “A lot of interest was shown by the youngsters themselves as I received number of messages to involve them in police implementation activities. After discussions with my team, we came up with the idea of starting an internship programme wherein these youngsters will get an opportunity to brainstorm with the administration and come up with solutions at the ground level. It was an opportunity for us to bring in fresh ideas to the table from which we can have new perspectives to solve issues and learn from them.”

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He further informed that they are looking for people who have completed their graduation or post-graduation and are willing to contribute to addressing issues at the field level. At the end of the internship, they will be assigned a task to solve a real issue while working with the department. During their internship, they will be visiting villages and other areas at the field level.

Through this initiative, the administration is aiming at the social and economic empowerment of people which will lead to the overall development of the district.

SELECTION CRITERIA

The candidates should have a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. They should be fluent in Tamil and English and have a specialization in relevant fields such as law, engineering, social science, natural science and so on, and, also, have knowledge of public policy.

Mr. Alby said, “We have asked them to come up with a social/economical/public health problem caused during the Covid pandemic and give their suggestions to solve the problem. Based on that, we will evaluate, and if needed, we might interview them and select five people for this three-month programme. The response is amazing as we are receiving a number of applications daily.”

The last date to apply is January 31, 2021. The candidates can apply to the internship programme by using this link – https://bit.ly/3FQOZJn or sending an email to [email protected].

ROLE OF INTERNS

During the programme, the interns will be engaged in area-specific projects. They will, hence, understand the challenges from people’s perspective and come up with practical solutions. They will engage with many stakeholders such as the government, public sector institutions, and civil society actors in promoting the efficiency of social protection programmes.

The interns shall work along with the stakeholders and provide the necessary support to district and local level administrations in terms of analytics, research, documentation, independent assessment, visualization, or any other related activities by submitting the weekly and monthly progress reports on the activities carried out by them.