Project profile — World Vision Canada - International Internships 2013-2014

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: (i) increased awareness among female and male Canadian youth of the equal possibility of working internationally; (ii) enhanced equal employability of female and male International Youth Internship Program (IYIP) interns in Canada and in the field of international development; (iii) improved capacity of female and male IYIP interns to contribute to international development in a gender-sensitive way.

Results achieved as of the end of the project (March 2014) include: coordinating 13 internships in 11 countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Laos, Mexico, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The interns assisted local partners with a variety of activities, including supporting two DFATD projects ‘’Supporting Systems to Achieve Improved Nutrition, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health’’ (SUSTAIN) in Tanzania and ‘’Systems Approach to Improve and Sustain Food Security in West Africa” (SATISFY) in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Senegal. The intern working for SUSTAIN in Tanzania assisted in the design and implementation of an information technology system that facilitates monitoring of project outputs. The three interns working on SATISFY, were each assigned a different country. One intern engaged in exploring agri-business practices and integrating new farming technologies, the second worked on household nutrition surveys and assessing links between agricultural production and nutrition, and the third assisted in the development of business models for food processing. The interns acquired new skills and abilities such as the knowledge of the challenges of development work in a country context, the direct engagement with development tools and methodologies, a better understanding of the impact of gender, and sector-based skills including the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), performing value chain analysis or developing a disaster risk reduction strategy.