Johannesburg, 2 December - The National Development Agency (NDA), has jumped in to contribute to the President’s promise of creating jobs. About 31 young unemployed graduates will be participating in six- and nine-month internship programmes respectively. The first 9 Information Technology interns have already reported for duty and assigned to the various provinces where NDA has offices. The 3 types of internship programmes offered are the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and, Services SETA which will be for 6 months, and NDA internships which will be for a period of 12 months. The SITA interns have successfully completed 6 months theory and need to do the balance of the year doing practicals.

Not only are the internships as a result of the call to create jobs during bad economic times, but the approach is in line with NDA’s strategic goal of promoting organisational sustainability, development, practice and excellence through the identification and creation of employment for vulnerable groups and specific people with disabilities.

“We believe that the internship programme will attract unemployed graduates and learners by providing them opportunities to acquire and improve their skills, knowledge and exposing them to formal, meaningful real-life work experiences. We will also appoint mentors who will guide these interns and empower them with new skills, knowledge, work ethics and other skills necessary for survival in the workplace”, says Sam Lewatle, NDA Human Resources Executive.

Overall the objectives of the internship programme are to meet the challenges of capacity building within the organisation albeit for short periods, create opportunities for interns to access employment at a later stage or become employers, facilitate transformation of workplaces into places that promote continuous learning and to bridge the gap between current education and labour needs.

The rest of the internships will be placed in the areas of Human Resources, Development Management, Marketing & Communications, Finance, Research & Development, Internal Audit, Information Technology, and for the CEO’s office depending on their areas of study. A total of 31 internships will be rolled out between November 2009 and May 2010.

The internships programme shall be non-renewable to ensure that equal opportunities are provided to others seeking participants. Mentors and coaches will train and monitor the interns so as to enrich their workplace experience. At the end of the term, the interns will be asked to produce workplace portfolio of evidence.

The NDA’s commitment towards the interns is to provide accurate description of the nature and requirements of the assignment, adequate supervision, support and oversight, provide the necessary resources to perform their duties, a reasonably safe environment and commit time to meet with the mentors for performance evaluations.

The Human Resources Directorate will monitor the quality of the workplace experience to ensure that opportunities identified for internship programmes contribute to strategic staffing needs of the Department. The aim of the programme will be to deliver a comprehensive training service in order to contribute towards the reduction of the unemployment within the country.