Mumbai: The Tata Social Internship programme provides a unique learning experience to students from some of the world’s best universities in the areas of community development and sustainability. The 2016 edition of the Tata Social Internship culminated with a contingent of 19 international students.
The batch of 2016, worked hands-on on the community initiatives of the Tata companies and entities like Tata Chemicals, Tata Power, Tata Communications, Taj, Tata Business Excellence Group, Tata Medical Center and the Tata Trusts for a period of two months.
Out of 19 international students, three are from the University of California, Berkeley, USA; one from the University of California, Davis, USA; nine from the London School of Economics & Political Science, UK; and six from the University of Cambridge, UK – completing their two-month experiential internship in the on-going sustainability projects of the Tata companies in India.
The areas of their projects ranged from the impact assessment of sustainability programmes at Tata companies to studies about health economics of infection management at hospitals, women literacy initiatives, tackling malnutrition, agriculture and non-agriculture-based livelihoods for rural hinterlands and improving education through technology, assessing student performance parameters, promoting traditional handicrafts, and skill development.
The programme structure of Tata Social Internship 2016 provided the interns with grass-root level exposure to India and at the same time brought international perspectives and practices to these projects at Tata companies, promoting international understanding.
The visiting interns, selected by their educational institutions along with Tata representatives, came from diverse academic backgrounds such as developmental studies, social anthropology, public policy, neurobiology, economics, gender studies, philosophy and engineering. The first phase of the internship programme kicked off on May 30, 2016 with the University of California, Berkeley students. The second phase for the interns from the University of California, Davis, Cambridge and the London School of Economics commenced on July 4, 2016.
As part of the programme, an interactive seminar took place in Mumbai on September 2, 2016, with the students from LSE, Cambridge and UC Davis, and students from the Centre for the Development of Corporate Citizenship at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, to share experiences in the area of community development and sustainability.
Atul Agrawal, senior vice president, corporate affairs, Tata Services, said, “Tata Social Internship serves the dual purpose of allowing us to provide international students with grass-root level exposure to India and developing our social sustainability outreach through knowledge sharing. With a diverse range of community projects on which the students have engaged, this platform reiterates the Tata group’s ethos of giving back to society while also helping to build international understanding.”
The students during their internship also participated in an online essay competition on their experience in India (essays can be accessed at http://www.tatasocial-in.com/tata-ises-experience). A distinctive corporate sustainability internship programme, Tata Social Internship was launched in 2008.
