Adopt an Intern, Scotland's unique service for graduates and businesses, is predicting a record year in 2015 as it prepares to celebrate its fifth anniversary.
The organisation led by Joy Lewis will stage an event at the Scottish Parliament on April 30 to showcase its success in creating paid internships for over 850 young people with support from employers ranging from Rolls Royce and Investors in People to Social Bite and Blipfoto.
Ms Lewis, who has decried a "dreadful unpaid internship culture" south of the Border, said: "In a year which will be dominated by the politics of the economy, it is essential that Adopt an Intern maintains its focus on our core mission - creating economic opportunity for talented young graduates and supporting the economic stability and growth of participating businesses."
She went on: "The most appropriate place to celebrate our mission in this context is in our Parliament, alongside ministers whose central policy priority of supporting sustainable economic growth enables them to continue to supply Adopt an Intern with the majority of our core funding."
The organisation emerged in early 2010 as a response by the Centre for Scottish Public Policy to the plight of unemployed or unpaid graduates. Ms Lewis advanced the cause with employers willing and able to pay for the right interns, and looked for grant funding to ensure that hard-up smaller businesses and charities were not excluded.
AAI works with organisations to identify graduate-level opportunities linked to specific work projects, then manages recruitment and short-listing to find the right candidate. It offers a free service including workshops for graduates, and can fund interns in specific cases.
Over three-quarters of former interns are in a permanent job within a year and almost all the remainder go on to another internship or further education.
The organisation has had no advertising budget, relying on word of mouth via the universities, but attracts an average 25 applicants per opportunity
In August 2013 the Scottish Government stepped in with £500,000 of core funding. Ms Lewis said: "I am very confident that we can make significant strides over the course of 2015 and predict it will be a record year in terms of interns placed."
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