Academic Institution Partnership

Academic Institution Partnership

EduCARE India has been continuously developing and creating academic institution partnership(s) with International and Indian universities for more than one decade.  We continuously work to create institutional networks to provide academic fieldwork and research possibilities through internships and study trips for bachelor, and master degree students.

We as an NGO are interested to further expand two forms of possible partnerships and collaborations with academic institutions from within India as well as from foreign countries:

  1. Collaboration for a specific community based research and development project
  2. Independent internships for students undertaking undergraduate / graduate studies of select subject areas who are motivated to work-learn and contribute to our rural community based/engaged sustainable development projects by participating in our:

a) Academic Fieldwork Internship Program (supervised / guided and independent work)

b) Academic Research Internship Program (in lab conditions under supervision of a qualified researcher)

c) Academic Fieldwork and Research Internship Program (supervised / guided and independent work)

Mentoring Support
Establishing a mentoring relationship requires dedication, commitment of time and patience. As an internship mentor we play an important role in the professional development of student interns with following considerations:

Orientation: It is important to orient the intern to our organisation work environment. Parts of it is formal and few parts informal. We provide written guidelines and an intern handbook, with frequently asked questions. We introduce the student to other co-workers, and management in person and on the organisation chart. We let them know where to find the accommodation, local community support, various work locations, meal rooms, supply cabinets, internet passwords etc.

We establish learning goals and objectives with context to an ongoing or new project: Take the time to discuss with the intern what they are looking to get out of the internship. Early in the semester, the intern is required to define two learning objectives and an ongoing project. Helping your intern to develop the objectives and project is critical to the success of the student achieving them during the internship.

Ongoing feedback: Student interns cannot get enough feedback. For many students this may be their first experience in a professional communications environment. They are there to learn so set aside time to share and review, time for the intern to ask questions and receive feedback. There are different situations and methods of giving feedback, one on one, groups, written, face-to-face.

Performance reviews:. Academic internships require formal evaluations. We undertake a mid-term and final evaluation. We plan to complete and then review with the student face to face. Constructive criticism and recommendations with an aim for continued growth are included. The formal evaluation cover over 10 performance indicators.

Legacy / History of 15 years:

We have already hosted hundreds of university students independently or through other placement / student mobility services companies since 2005. We have coordinated and implemented several small scale projects in pursuit of developing scalable and replicable solutions to address critical problems in gender issues, healthcare, rural economy, poverty, hunger, informal education, water sanitation, waste management, energy, healthcare, agriculture and biodiversity etc in rural India in support of global partnerships for sustainable development through grass-root level community action.

Having seen the great potential of university students to contribute to cross-cultural sustainable development work and creating global perspectives / global citizenship among the local populations and themselves as future leaders, we have decided to further enhance such participation potential.

Academic institutions and universities can play an important role in increasing the dissemination and impact of new knowledge, methodologies, theories and applications that are shown by NGO-Academic Institutions / University cooperation to be relevant in the field. Proper exploiting of this opportunity would positively feedback in the non-profit NGO / development sector and education systems for young professionals of the future.

Academic Institution Internship Partnership Program:

Towards this end, we have recently formalised our Academic Institution Internship Partnership Program (AIIPP) to bolster collaborations with local and international universities, schools, departments and other academic institutions.

The objectives of this initiative are to:

  1. Develop on-going collaboration between EduCARE India and its affiliate program organisations engaged in grass-root level community and sustainable development work in India to promote synergies between our community work and the related academic institutions;
  2. Coordinate and follow-up on existing institutional partnerships as priority partners; Further develop these existing collaborations through continuing improvement in learning outcomes of participating students’ in our internship programs by maintaining regular communications and feedback system with their faculty / departments;
  3. Support new academic institutions who wish to partner and develop new forms of collaboration with us;
  4. Propose collaboration projects and partnership agreements to new academic institutions or their representing student mobility services companies to establish an affiliation with us to provide quality experiential learning opportunities to their students to participate in certain educational experiences offered through our internship program in our NGO in India;
  5. Oversee and increase the number of internships and trainee-ships proposed to the university students;
  6. Maintain a regularly updated collaboration registry and disseminate information.

We have projects and ideas that need assistance or expertise to get started.
If your institute has enthusiastic students who would love to work – learn with us, please fill the Online form for consultations on Academic Institution Internship Partnership Program


Academic Institution Internship Partnership Program Form