Interns take talents into community

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Put yourself in the picture. You're probably between 30 and 50, accomplished and settled in your career. You could go on performing well for years yet.

Yet there might be a niggling thought: isn't there more to the rest of my working life than this?

Yes, there is - if you're willing to do a six-month secondment, sharing your skills with groups that would otherwise not have them.

As part of a drive to forge links between business and the community, more than $500,000 in Government money is available to pay for at least five people, and possibly 20, to work with charity and community organisations this year.

The Community Internship Programme, an initiative of Green Party MP Sue Bradford, is run by the Department of Internal Affairs. It had $500,000 last year to finance the placements of 20 people.

The group ranged in age from 20 to 60-something, with an equal number of men and women.

Administrator and analyst Andrea Sarty, of Internal Affairs, is crossing her fingers that the same sum will be available for the next round of internships, which would start in January. Five placements are already guaranteed.

The scheme, she says, spreads knowledge in all directions - a cross-fertilisation essential in a country pinning its economic future on "brainy" industries.

The intern gets insights and experience, the community organisation benefits from skills it might not have had access to, and the home organisation benefits from a returning employee's insight and new talents.

The programme "appeals to a lot of people", says Sarty. "Like Volunteer Service Abroad, it's doing something different and feeling you're helping others for a change."

The first intern was Rebekah Foulks, a tertiary student who was between degrees.

She worked for the Golden Bay Work Centre Trust as a strategic plan facilitator.

Foulks was paid for the six months through a standard $20,250 grant to the trust for salary - which could be topped up by either her home organisation or her host.

Another $2250 grant went to the trust to set up a place for her to work.

The grants don't pay the interns' full salary - but they more than cover living costs.

While the project is still "finding its feet" and raising its profile, says Sarty, rules have been flexible to get things moving.

Some people in the intake, while possessing the necessary transferable skills, didn't have jobs to which they would return.

Two people now on internships, Wellington's Amanda Scothern and central North Islander Linda Spafford, had resigned from their previous jobs before starting their six-month stints, and will be job-seeking again in a few months.

But for the next round, a "home organisation" will be a firm requirement. Sarty is hoping to engage the interest of the growing number of corporates making volunteer work part of staff development. "We'd love to have lots of applications from the corporate sector and business."

Internships are a two-way thing, says Rotorua's Naumai Taurua, who is developing programmes in anger management and problem-solving for school-age children for the city's Mana Social Services.

"It's an opportunity to experience a new industry while using skills you have already, or have learned through study. It's a window into another world."

Linda Spafford, 51, had been a programme manager for Taupo's Employment Support Trust for four years, and needed a change.

Impetus came in her local paper. The Mangakino Community Agency advertised for expressions of interest in an internship with the Through a Child, Youth and Family pilot project for poorer communities. The Government had given locals $95,000 a year for three years for programmes to improve the quality of life for children and their families.

But Mangakino was at risk of losing the pilot project because the required action plan had not been done.

Spafford, who lives 25 minutes outside the town, spent her first five weeks as an intern frantically pulling people and an action plan together, thus securing the money and kick-starting work geared towards three projects: a community centre - Mangakino doesn't have one - a swimming pool, and vocational training programmes.

"They needed some guidance and someone who knew what to do," says Spafford, who works out of the Taupo District Council office in Mangakino. "Because they were all volunteers and all busy people, they would have run out of time. And because the money wasn't a large amount, they couldn't afford to pay for a co-ordinator. And then the internship came along."

Spafford has taken a drop in income - on an annual basis, her internship is worth $37,000 - but "it's only for six months. I view [the internship] as a challenge and a new direction I can take. I do hope that I'm making a difference."

And she has learned plenty, about herself and her collaborators. "I have a greater insight into how Maori operate - the process involved in how they like to think things through," she says.

"I had to be careful I didn't impose how I worked - they had to own it. I had to guide them, but let them own it. Governance rather than management.

"And I have a deeper understanding of what volunteers do - and the real workings of communities."

Ruth Gardner, the manager of the two-person Volunteering Canterbury, describes intern Michael Smith as "a luxury".

Smith, 35, is producing a guide on employee volunteering, putting flesh on a project to foster business-community links that the charity hasn't had the resources to complete "for years".

Smith's boss at the Canterbury Local Employment Coordination Group suggested the internship. "He thought it was quite a good idea".

Smith returns to his analysis and research job in August, with new contacts, extended networking and practical skills, a new appreciation of volunteers, and proof that a break is as good as a rest.

"This has been quite a good break," he says, "and I'm ready to get back into my usual tasks."

Gardner wishes she could keep Smith longer. The project had needed "someone who could put some hours in", she says. "It's a luxury for a community group to have a person with such good skills."

* The next round of the Community Internship Programme closes on July 26. Contact Andrea Sarty at the Community Development Group, Department of Internal Affairs. Phone (04) 495-9327 or email internship@dia.govt.nz

Details will be on the DIA website by the end of this month, at Department of Internal Affairs