INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 4
Accompanying a young person to the labour market by organizing various forms of work placement
CHAPTER 4
Accompanying a young person to the labour market by organizing various forms of work placement Author Gintarė Joteikaitė
This section presents the different forms of work placement that a youth worker has to deal with when working with young people and in order to help them to try out in various ways jobs that they are interested in. LONG-TERM INTERNSHIP Long-term internships are the most common form of internship, which is recognized and applied in the framework of the formal education system and in enterprise development strategies. This is usually a 1-12 months long project of mutual commitment and benefit, where the trainee, in cooperation with the chosen organization, undertakes to develop the necessary and relevant to him/her competencies as well as work skills. In this case, a written agreement can be concluded between both (trainee and organization) and three (trainee, organization and educational institution) interested parties, in which the objectives, tasks, duration and other conditions of the internship are specified. The advantage of a long-term internship is that during it a young person can examine in more detail and learn more about work specifics and culture of the organization where he/she is doing an internship, to get used to the work regime and develop certain work habits and discipline required for the chosen speciality. Also an indisputable advantage of this form of internship is that trainees often become full-rate paid employees of organizations, as the period of long-term internship also becomes their probation period.
SHORT-TERM INTERNSHIP Short-term internship has similar goals as long-term one – to get to know in more detail the peculiarities of the chosen speciality by exploring the internal and external processes that are taking place in the host organization. In this case, however, the commitments of the two or three parties mentioned above last significantly shorter, i.e., from one week to one month (in certain cases, a two or three parties’ commitment process which lasts up to three months may also be considered a short-term internship). During long-term internships, the intern is usually more involved in the various work processes in the organization and the related employment relations, whereas during short-term internships, specific limited functions and tasks are usually assigned which do not oblige (or give the possibility) the intern to gain a deeper understanding of the specifics of the organization’s activities and speciality’s work from different perspectives.
LONG-TERM VOLUNTEERING Long-term volunteering is a process that lasts from three months to several years. And nowadays, a precise definition of this type of volunteering is being actively sought in the youth field. One also seeks to establish a
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