A group of students from Mumbai’s HR College will keep their counterparts from across the country busy in the summer vacations. The students, part of the college’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) chapter, are offering an innovative summer internship programme — My Project Chirag — which involves lighting up electricity deprived villages. SIFE is an international organisation with presence in over 45 countries and SIFE HRC is the HR College chapter of the organisation in India.

“The internship involves various aspects, right from market research where students have to find villages that have no access to any kind of electricity to estimating cost of the entire project based on the number of houses. They also have to raise funds by putting into work their marketing skills. It’s open to students of colleges, schools, engineering institutes and business schools,” said Jyotirmoy Chatterji, president, SIFE HRC. The internship will be for duration of two to four weeks.

“We are looking at electrifying villages in Maharashtra, North India, Gujarat and Kerala through the programme this summer,” Chatterji added. Subsequently, while undertaking production, students will have to work with the paraplegic community (physically challenged) for assembling solar equipments. That will be followed by quality testing of the products manufactured. “The final stage will be project execution, where the interns along with HR College SIFE volunteers will go and electrify the village. On successful completion of the programme, students will be awarded a certificate by HR College and SIFE HRC.

An internship letter with complete details with regards to the student’s involvement in the project will also be given,” said Chatterji. He added that through the internship, students will be able to put in practice most management functions they learn in a classroom. They will do market research, human resource management, financial planning, quality control, production planning and strategy management, among others. The college has so far received over 100 applications from across India of students who want to enroll for the internship. Besides, 24 students from HR College have already joined.

“We are getting a great response. Students from engineering and MBA institutes, regular colleges and even schools have applied. We are in the process of putting them into groups and once that is done, they will begin the work,” Chatterji said. “Apart from the credibility of having executed such a project which, we believe, is at par with any corporate internship, students will get certification from a recognised body, thus adding value to their resume as being part of a youth-led social initiative.”