Internship with Government of Bihar – ICDS Internship Program for post graduate students
A golden opportunity to witness a resurgent Bihar’s growth story first hand. The Social Welfare Department (SWD), Government of Bihar is inviting applications for summer internships from post graduate and above students from select few streams (given below). The selected interns for this paid internship would assist in implementation of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in Bihar. The last date to apply is 31st March 2013 – hurry!
About ICDS: – Started by the Government of In-dia in 1975, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program has been instrumental in improving the health and well being of mothers and children under 6 by providing health and nutrition education, health services, supplementary food, and pre-school education. The ICDS national development programme in India is one of the largest wel-fare programmes in the world. It reaches more than 75 million children aged 0-6 years and 16 million pregnant and lactating mothers across India through a chain of more than 1.2 million Anganwadi Centres (AWCs).
ICDS in Bihar: – In Bihar, the ICDS programme today reaches out to more than four million children under six years of age and around one million expectant and nursing mothers. Of these, nearly two million children (between the ages of three to six) also participate in centre-based preschool education activities. These expectant and nursing mothers and children under the age of 6 are reached through around 91,000 Anganwadi Centres (AWCs). Some of the key challenges faced by the programme in Bihar are:
1. Increasing the efficiency, coverage and impact of the programme
2. Functional convergence with other programmes impact-ing under-nutrition namely the Mid Day Meal Scheme, State Rural Health Mission and the Public Distribution System
3. Achieving economies of scale especially for supplemen-tary nutrition for severely undernourished children
4. Improving the quality and reliability of data for more effective targeting and decision making
5. Streamlining processes for skill and knowledge transfer among frontline ICDS workforce for more effective service delivery, etc.
About the Internship: – Interns would be attached to various CDPOs and DPOs offices across the state of Bihar and also to the State head-quarter under the overall guid-ance of the Director ICDS/Secretary, SWD during the period of internship.
Through this scheme, the SWD/ICDS expects to benefit from the fresh insights and assistance of the young students, whereas the selected interns would gain valuable, real-world experience of working on some of the most challenging developmental issues faced by the world today which would substantially compliment their academic learning and provide them an edge to enter the productive workforce after the completion of their respective academic programmes.
Who can apply: – Students of different post-graduate program from leading universities/institutions of India. Students who are pursuing their masters/doctoral/equivalent degrees in the following areas of specialization – International Development, Economics, Development, Public Policy, Public Administration, Business Administration, Sociology, Social Work, Rural Development, Public Health, Nutrition, Statistics etc. – would be better equipped for the internship.
Location: – Bihar, India
Duration: – 6-10 weeks (between May-August 2013)
Stipend: – INR 8,000/- per month
How to apply: – Please refer to Government of Bihar ICDS Summer Internship Scheme page for more info and application details. The last date to apply is 31st March 2013 – hurry!
Editor’s note: – Information above is my interpretation and paraphrasing of what I found on the shared link. If you have any more specific information on this internship or have interned in this program before and would like to share your experience, please leave a comment.
FYI! You can also look for similar internships on Internshala.
This internship was shared by Rohan Kundu from SSCBS, DU, and with this he wins a prize in Share an Internship – win exciting prizes! contest. Congratulations Rohan – keep up the good work!
Image credit: – http://www.thp.org/files/images/bihar_map.jpg
