Industrial and summer placements are a gateway for students to gain practical experience in a profession that they are considering as a career.

Summer placements

Apply early, some placements for the summer period have closing dates of December in the preceding year! Apply speculatively to large and small companies. Most of us have a dream company: BBC, FCO, Virgin. Take the bull by the horns and ask whether they offer any summer placement schemes. Often, they are nearly as hard to get hold of as proper jobs, but they are a great introduction to the rat race.

Industrial placements

Many degree courses, known as sandwich courses have compulsory industrial placements, where students have to take 6 months to a year "out" in order to gain practical experience in the field that they are studying. Companies want to have undergraduates working for them because it permits identification of good ones for possible permanent jobs. To get a placement, leave the student attitude and dress sense in the student bar. On a placement you are in their world, and have to act and dress as such.

Placements are a great way of learning about your chosen career (even if it's just to find out that you really don't want to work in that area after all!). You will no doubt get some training, the chance to use your initiative and complete your own projects, names of referees, and a salary.

The LX 330. Com team receives a number of mails related to internship opportunities. We have decided to post some of them online but students must be aware that we have not tested them. We cannot guarantee their reliability, relevance or integrity.
Our selection criteria are that they come from non-profit organizations or are transmitted through trustworthy scholarly academic associations like SAES and AFEA.
However, we welcome any information concerning such ads and welcome any tip likely to help our students find alternative internship programs.

CES volunteer internship opportunities

CES offers a limited number of volunteer programmes per year for research students and interested individuals seeking work experience in eco-cultural related disciplines. The selected volunteers will have the opportunity to work with on-site scientists, researchers or service staff in the focal areas of education and skills development and scientific research.

• Community education and skills development in non-destructive nature-based enterprises
• Environmental education
• Language training: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Russian and Spanish
• Health care and related fields of service.

Duration of internship : A period of 1 to 3 months

Internship fees: US $250 per month [includes basic field accommodation, attached bathrooms & water supply, local meals and field travel within the project site.

Application procedures: Interested students should send their Curriculum vitae, application for volunteer internship programme and a self-written essay (of not more than one A4 page) should include the following:

• Describe the specific interest in obtaining work experience in eco-cultural-related disciplines
• Describe as to what you would like to do (aims/objectives) in relation to the main activities of CES and focal areas of Internship opportunities.

Application deadline: Applications are welcomed throughout the year.
Start date of Internship: Commencement of Internships is scheduled for the 1st of each month. For example, 1st February, 1st June, 1st September, etc. This will follow three days of orientation.

Applications to be sent via email if possible. After the initial review of applications, CES will request further details within a period of two weeks.

At the end of the internship the volunteer interns who have succeeded in fulfilling the assigned tasks will be awarded a certificate from CES.
Interns who have been involved in the field research projects for not less than three months will also have the opportunity to co-author a research publication, depending on individual performance.

We would greatly appreciate if you could make this information available to students in your programme that might be looking for research/work experience opportunities overseas.

Further information (including details about the Volunteer Internship Programmes) could be obtained from the web site: www.cessrilanka.org. (website in the process of being updated)

Snail-mail:
CES Volunteer Internship Programme
Centre for Eco-cultural Studies (CES)
PO Box 03, Diyakapilla, Sigiriya
Sri Lanka

E-mail: cesvolunteers@hotmail.com and centeco@sltnet.lk